Use of a Self-Recording Procedure to Decrease the Time Taken by Behaviorally Disordered Students to Walk to Special Classes.

A multiple-baseline across subjects design was used to assess the efficacy of a self-recording procedure on the ability of three behaviorally disordered students to walk directly from their regular classes to their special education class. Students were asked to press a button located near the door of their resource class which activated a digital stopwatch in the resource room. Students pressed another button in the resource room which stopped the stopwatch. Students chose from an array of reinforcers de pendent upon the number of days per week they had walked from their regular classes to the resource class in a specified time or less. Results indicated that the self-record ing procedure in conjunction with the reward system was effective in increasing the number of days the students walked from their regular classes to the resource class in an expeditious manner. Numerous studies have revealed that self-recording can be an effective treatment technique for nonhandicapped and handicapped youngsters. Seymour and Stokes (1976) used self-recording in conjunction with a token economy program to improve the work performance of female stu dents in an institutional setting. A later study by Brigham, Hill, Hopper, and Adams (1980) re vealed that the inappropriate behavior of adolescents could be reduced by using a self-recording procedure. Self-recording has also been used to increase the amount of time students pay atten tion (Kapadia & Fantuzzo, 1988; Kneedler & Hallahan, 1981), complete academic assignments (Lovitt, 1973), increase verbalizations (Nelson, Lipinski, & Boykin, 1978), and improve school at tendance (McKenzie & Rushall, 1974). Excellent reviews of how self-recording and related pro cedures have been used by educators have been completed by Gross and Drabman (1982) and Fantuzzo, Polite, Cook, and Quinn (1988). The cumulative evidence is compelling. Self-recording can be very effective under a variety of circumstances and with a variety of children. One particular type of behavior often troublesome for handicapped children and their teachers is the ability of children to leave their regular classrooms and walk directly and without incident to their special classes. Lovitt (1984) described a self-monitoring system teachers used to assist children to walk to and from resource rooms in an appropriate way. The system involved teach ing students how to monitor their own behavior by noting on specially prepared cards whether they had walked to and from their classes in a specified time or less. Students earned rewards for getting to classes on time. The purpose of this study was to determine if a self-recording procedure similar to that de scribed by Lovitt (1984) in combination with a novel data collection approach would decrease the amount of time taken by behaviorally disordered students to walk from their regular classes to their special class. 210 [Vol. 15 No. 4 210-216] August 1990 Behavioral Disorders This content downloaded from 207.46.13.21 on Tue, 27 Sep 2016 04:15:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms