Use of Skin-Shock at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center (JRC)

 

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The Effect of Performance Rate on Retention 
 

Michelle I. Harrington, Angela Galvin, Edward Langford, Matthew L. Israel Ph.D.

 

Judge Rotenberg Educational Center
240 Turnpike St.
Canton, MA 02021
(781) 828-2202

 

Based on a poster presented at Association for Behavior Analysis Conference, May 2005, Chicago, IL

 

1)      Introduction

This study explored setting frequency rates at different levels and how this affects retention of learned information.  General belief in the Precision Teaching community is that mastering material at higher rates correct-per-minute leads to a number of benefits, one of which is better retention of the material learned.  This study attempted to provide insight into this issue. Discussion included whether learning information to a higher rate correct produces better retention of learned information than when learned to half that rate correct. 

2)      Method

The participant worked[ga1]  on a computer program[ga2]  that presented the definition of a word on the screen and required her to type the word.  These words were taken from a World History textbook that the participant had not been exposed to previously.  She worked on two different sets of words.  Each set was comprised of 20 words, with an average of 7 letters per word and an average of 9-10 words per definition.  The first list of words had a criterion of 16 corrects per minute.  The second list of words had a criterion of 8 corrects per minute.

The words were presented in a one-minute timing, requiring the participant to complete as many items as she could during that time.  She was able to receive a visual prompt at any time during a timing by hitting the F1 key on the keyboard.  Each time she hit the F1 key, another letter of the word was revealed. When the participant typed a word correctly, a green check appeared and when she typed a word incorrectly, a red ‘x’ appeared, and the word was shown[ga3] . When the participant was completing items at or above her required frequency, a green border appeared on the perimeter of the computer screen. When she completed items below her required frequency, a red border appeared on the perimeter of the computer screen.

The participant completed 10 timings each day on the list being learned.  The participant’s best per-day results, which included number of correct and incorrect words and prompts were plotted on a Standard Celeration Chart (Lindsley, 1992, p. 51). Best per-day is defined as the most words correct with the least words incorrect.  

3)      Results

As shown in Figure 1, the participant reached a rate of 16 correct words in one minute on the first word list on the eleventh day of training.  Over the eleven day testing period, she completed a total of 110 timings.  As her prompt rate use went down, her errors increased, until she was able to bring both to zero.  When the participant’s retention on the word list was checked a week later, she was able to type 10 words per minute with no errors, using 8 prompts per minute.  The participant worked through the second word list three weeks later.  On the second word list, she reached a rate of 8 correctly typed words per minute on the fourth day of training. Over four days, she completed a total of 40 timings. This time, both her errors and prompt rate remained significantly lower.  When her retention was checked a week later, although her rate of words typed correctly and incorrectly remained similar, her prompt rate was higher than during her very first timing with word list two. 

4)      Discussion

The participant retained more words from the first word list.  Since the participant was required to reach a rate of 16 words per minute with list one, as compared with 8 words per minute on list two, she worked on the first list for a longer period of time and completed more timings.  It appeared that the second word list was not learned to the level of automaticity that the first was.  Better retention of the first list of words could also be attributed to the fact that the participant did 70 more timings on the first list than the second list.

Further study should examine how retention is affected by increased intervals between a final timing and a retention check. It may also be appropriate to explore learning to higher rates than those used in this study, and how they affect retention.  Also, this study should be done using different learning channels, than the See/Type channel used in this study (Lindsley, 1990, p.14) 


 [ga1]Do you want past tense all the way through?

 [ga2]Are you going to name the program?

 [ga3]For how long?