Effectiveness of using a contingency management on improving graduate student behavior

Document Type

Thesis

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Psychology

Degree

M.S. Applied Behavior Analysis

Date Completed

2021

First Committee Member

Bourret, Jason

Second Committee Member

Thompson, Rachel

Third Committee Member

Roscoe, Eileen

Abstract

"We combined methods used in deposit contracts with contingency management to evaluate the establishment of intraverbal behavior in graduate students’ verbal repertoires. Contingency management is used to increase or decrease the likelihood of behavior by arranging consequences following behavior. Deposit contracts are those in which participants willingly risk their own money to change their behavior. Previous studies demonstrated success with using deposit contracts to produce behavior change; they have been used to address targets such as weight loss and smoking cessation. In the present study, we evaluated the effects of a monetary contingency in which the participants willingly deposited their money and participated in a contingency to learn behavior analytic technical definitions. For two out of three participants, an instructions only phase was evaluated; their money was kept by the researcher and was returned following the completion of their participation in the study. This was used to evaluate whether the description of the contingency alone was sufficient in producing response acquisition. A contingency was placed on a pre-determined set of terms, and if the participants correctly recited each of the definitions within that set, they did not lose any money. If they did not correctly recite all required terms, they were told their money was sent to a non-preferred organization. Results indicate that deposit contracts can be effective in establishing intraverbal behavior in graduate students’ verbal repertoires."

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