title: The effects of reinforcement context on the effectiveness of social consequences

authors: Osborne, Morton John

subjects: real-time video recording

abstract: The current study analyses the classroom social context; the rate of teacher task talk with respect to social consequences (praise and reprimand), in relation to the rate of on-task and unwanted behaviour of a target student in the classroom. Teacher behaviour talk (talk related to student conduct), social talk (social, non-academic talk) and proximity to the target student are also assayed.  Teacher verbal behaviour was recorded towards whom it was addressed: to the whole class, to a target student, to other students, and analysed severally and combined (summed) in relation to student on-task and unwanted behaviour.  Data were obtained by continuous recording of classroom behaviour and collated in to 60 second intervals.  All correlations were calculated on seconds of occurrence of that behaviour per minute.  This allowed for lagging the independent variable relative to dependent variables to better reflect the subsequent nature of the independent variable, such as praise and reprimand, rather than assaying contiguous relationships alone.  Results indicated that teacher verbal behaviour directed toward the target student did not relate significantly with student on-task behaviour or student unwanted behaviour.  The teacher verbal behaviour that related most significantly with both student on-task behaviour and student unwanted behaviour was teacher task talk to the whole class, followed by teacher task talk to the whole class, to the target student and to other students combined.  Teacher reprimand and behaviour talk directed toward the target student did not relate significantly with student on-task or unwanted behaviour.  Teacher reprimand and behaviour talk to the whole class, to the target student and to other students combined was significantly related to the decrease in student unwanted behaviour and increase in on-task behaviour given lag analysis for those teachers maintaining a high (greater than 50% of available time) rate of task talk. For teachers that did not do so, teacher verbal behaviour did not maintain significant relationships with student on-task or unwanted behaviour.  Results for this lower rate of teacher task talk were characterized by variability both in student behaviour and teacher verbal behaviour.  A case study was conducted increasing the general rate of teacher task talk which supported the above findings.  These results indicate that there is substantial commonality between student behaviour within the classroom and that teacher talk to the whole class and combined (i.e. the sum of addressing the whole class, the target student and other students) is significantly more predictive of individual student behaviour than is teacher talk directed to a target student alone. Teacher social talk was significantly related to teacher reprimand and behaviour talk.  Teacher proximity to the target student was not significantly related to student on-task or unwanted behaviour. The findings are discussed in relation to previous research findings and teaching practice.

text: The effects of reinforcement context on the effectiveness of social consequences The current study analyses the classroom social context; the rate of teacher task talk with respect to social consequences (praise and reprimand), in relation to the rate of on-task and unwanted behaviour of a target student in the classroom. Teacher behaviour talk (talk related to student conduct), social talk (social, non-academic talk) and proximity to the target student are also assayed.  Teacher verbal behaviour was recorded towards whom it was addressed: to the whole class, to a target student, to other students, and analysed severally and combined (summed) in relation to student on-task and unwanted behaviour.  Data were obtained by continuous recording of classroom behaviour and collated in to 60 second intervals.  All correlations were calculated on seconds of occurrence of that behaviour per minute.  This allowed for lagging the independent variable relative to dependent variables to better reflect the subsequent nature of the independent variable, such as praise and reprimand, rather than assaying contiguous relationships alone.  Results indicated that teacher verbal behaviour directed toward the target student did not relate significantly with student on-task behaviour or student unwanted behaviour.  The teacher verbal behaviour that related most significantly with both student on-task behaviour and student unwanted behaviour was teacher task talk to the whole class, followed by teacher task talk to the whole class, to the target student and to other students combined.  Teacher reprimand and behaviour talk directed toward the target student did not relate significantly with student on-task or unwanted behaviour.  Teacher reprimand and behaviour talk to the whole class, to the target student and to other students combined was significantly related to the decrease in student unwanted behaviour and increase in on-task behaviour given lag analysis for those teachers maintaining a high (greater than 50% of available time) rate of task talk. For teachers that did not do so, teacher verbal behaviour did not maintain significant relationships with student on-task or unwanted behaviour.  Results for this lower rate of teacher task talk were characterized by variability both in student behaviour and teacher verbal behaviour.  A case study was conducted increasing the general rate of teacher task talk which supported the above findings.  These results indicate that there is substantial commonality between student behaviour within the classroom and that teacher talk to the whole class and combined (i.e. the sum of addressing the whole class, the target student and other students) is significantly more predictive of individual student behaviour than is teacher talk directed to a target student alone. Teacher social talk was significantly related to teacher reprimand and behaviour talk.  Teacher proximity to the target student was not significantly related to student on-task or unwanted behaviour. The findings are discussed in relation to previous research findings and teaching practice.

year: 2019

title: Examining Cigarette and Craving Rates Using ACT-Based (2Morrow Quit™) and Mindfulness-Based (Craving to Quit®) Mobile Health Applications

authors: Tan, Rachel

abstract: There has been a growing number of mobile health (mHealth) smartphone applications (apps) that target smoking cessation. There is concern that many smartphone apps for smoking cessation lack evidence-based practices, which harms the apps’ efficacy and effectiveness. Two evidence-based mHealth apps that target smoking cessation are Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)-based 2Morrow Quit™ (2Q) and mindfulness-based Craving to Quit® (CTQ). 2Q is based on the ACT framework that teaches strategies to increase acceptance and reduce experiential avoidance, while making values-guided committed behaviour changes. CTQ is based on mindfulness training (MT) that teaches techniques to decouple the link between craving and smoking, established by associative and reinforcing processes. This study’s purpose was to examine the effectiveness of 2Q and CTQ using a single-subject A1-B-A2-A3 design with a broad recruitment strategy that included anyone worldwide. There were two main areas explored: (1) to examine if ACT-based 2Q would reduce cigarette intake and cravings to smoke when compared to CTQ; and (2) to examine if having greater acceptance and commitment during post-intervention would predict better smoking outcomes (i.e., reduced cigarette consumption, reduced cravings, or quit smoking) when compared to CTQ. There was evidence of a small reduction in cigarette consumption for both intervention groups but was not statistically significant. There was limited evidence that both interventions were effective in reducing cravings to smoke because of observed differences, and no statistical significance found. There was limited evidence that higher acceptance and commitment levels predicted better smoking outcomes. It is speculated that 2Q is more engaging than CTQ; however, in terms of effectiveness, it is necessary to replicate this study with a larger sample size to produce adequate statistical power.

text: Examining Cigarette and Craving Rates Using ACT-Based (2Morrow Quit™) and Mindfulness-Based (Craving to Quit®) Mobile Health Applications There has been a growing number of mobile health (mHealth) smartphone applications (apps) that target smoking cessation. There is concern that many smartphone apps for smoking cessation lack evidence-based practices, which harms the apps’ efficacy and effectiveness. Two evidence-based mHealth apps that target smoking cessation are Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)-based 2Morrow Quit™ (2Q) and mindfulness-based Craving to Quit® (CTQ). 2Q is based on the ACT framework that teaches strategies to increase acceptance and reduce experiential avoidance, while making values-guided committed behaviour changes. CTQ is based on mindfulness training (MT) that teaches techniques to decouple the link between craving and smoking, established by associative and reinforcing processes. This study’s purpose was to examine the effectiveness of 2Q and CTQ using a single-subject A1-B-A2-A3 design with a broad recruitment strategy that included anyone worldwide. There were two main areas explored: (1) to examine if ACT-based 2Q would reduce cigarette intake and cravings to smoke when compared to CTQ; and (2) to examine if having greater acceptance and commitment during post-intervention would predict better smoking outcomes (i.e., reduced cigarette consumption, reduced cravings, or quit smoking) when compared to CTQ. There was evidence of a small reduction in cigarette consumption for both intervention groups but was not statistically significant. There was limited evidence that both interventions were effective in reducing cravings to smoke because of observed differences, and no statistical significance found. There was limited evidence that higher acceptance and commitment levels predicted better smoking outcomes. It is speculated that 2Q is more engaging than CTQ; however, in terms of effectiveness, it is necessary to replicate this study with a larger sample size to produce adequate statistical power.

year: 2019

title: Māori loanwords: a corpus of New Zealand English tweets

authors: Trye, David

abstract: Māori loanwords are widely used in New Zealand English for various social functions by New Zealanders within and outside of the Māori community. Motivated by the lack of linguistic resources for studying how Māori loanwords are used in social media, we present a new corpus of New Zealand English tweets. We collected tweets containing selected Māori words that are likely to be known by New Zealanders who do not speak Māori. Since over 30% of these words turned out to be irrelevant (e.g., mana is a popular gaming term, Moana is a character from a Disney movie), we manually annotated a sample of our tweets into relevant and irrelevant categories. This data was used to train machine learning models to automatically filter out irrelevant tweets.

text: Māori loanwords: a corpus of New Zealand English tweets Māori loanwords are widely used in New Zealand English for various social functions by New Zealanders within and outside of the Māori community. Motivated by the lack of linguistic resources for studying how Māori loanwords are used in social media, we present a new corpus of New Zealand English tweets. We collected tweets containing selected Māori words that are likely to be known by New Zealanders who do not speak Māori. Since over 30% of these words turned out to be irrelevant (e.g., mana is a popular gaming term, Moana is a character from a Disney movie), we manually annotated a sample of our tweets into relevant and irrelevant categories. This data was used to train machine learning models to automatically filter out irrelevant tweets.

year: 2019