Elizabeth S. Athens, Timothy R. Vollmer, & Claire C. St. Peter Pipkin (2007).
Shaping academic task engagement with percentile schedules.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis,
40, 475-488.
The purpose of this study was to examine the use of percentile schedules as
a method of quantifying the shaping procedure in an educational setting. We
compared duration of task engagement during baseline measurements for 4
students to duration of task engagement during a percentile schedule. As a
secondary purpose, we examined the influence on shaping of manipulations
of the number of observations used to determine the criterion for reinforcement
(the m parameter of the percentile formula). Results showed that the percentile
formula was most effective when a relatively large m value (20 observations) was used.
DESCRIPTORS: shaping, academic engagement, percentile schedules