The Predictive Capabilities of Three Sources for a Promised Consequence

The present investigation evaluated the predictive capabilities of three sources frequently used for the identification of effective rein forcers for 54 students with mild learning and behavioral disabilities. The effectiveness of parent, teacher, and student rankings of a given set of consequences as predictors of the strength of an anticipated consequence in influencing the subject's performance on a basic math skills task was investigated. Ten cards depicting various consequences were independently ranked from most to least preferred for each student by the parent, teacher and student. Then the ten stimuli on the cards were each evaluated for their “anticipated” consequent strength for each student. This procedure involved presenting the student with (a) a 1-minute sampling of the particular consequence being evaluated and an explanation of the contingency to the subject; (b) a 2-minute presentation of an 84-problem single-digit addition fact worksheet; and (c) the presentation of the consequence contingent upon the number of problems correctly computed. Performance rates under ten anticipated consequating conditions formulated the promised consequence rankings. Spearman rank-order correlation coefficients were computed in an effort to access the predictive capabilities of the three sources of information (parent, teacher and child rankings) with regard to the promised consequence ranking (strength). Results indicate that the consequence rankings reported by the child were the only scores that significantly correlated with the anticipated consequence ranking performance. Although neither parent nor teacher rankings significantly correlated with the anticipated consequence rankings, they did significantly correlate with each other. These findings appear to suggest that the student him/herself is the only source which can significantly predict in advance the potential influence of an anticipated consequence.