The Effect of the Establishment of Conditioned Reinforcement for Reading Content on Second-Graders' Reading...

There remains a gap in the current literature as to how to reliably measure and increase students' "voluntary reading," based on research suggesting a relation between reading amount and reading achievement. We tested the effect of the establishment of conditioned reinforcement for reading via a collaborative shared reading (CSR) conditioning procedure on eight 2nd-grade students with and without learning disabilities and developmental disorders. This conditioning procedure was composed of opportunities for reciprocal reading and collaboration on comprehension and vocabulary tasks related to the reading content, such that partners (teacher-participant or participant-participant) were required to work together. We utilized a combined small-n experimental-control simultaneous-treatment design with a single-case multiple-probe design nested within each small group in order to compare within- and between-group differences for participants in the CSR procedure with a teacher or peer. All participants for whom conditioned reinforcement for reading was established (n = 7) demonstrated gains in reading achievement after a maximum of nine sessions (412 min), with grade-level increases between 0.2 and 2.5 on measures of reading comprehension and between 0.3 and 3.1 on measures of vocabulary. The students in the teacher-yoked condition (n = 3) demonstrated more significant gains in their average increases in achievement, although the peer-yoked procedure was also effective and possibly more viable in a classroom setting. These results suggest that a CSR procedure with a teacher or peer should be considered as a means of increasing the reading achievement of early elementary students via increases in the reinforcement value of reading.