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The Use of Accelerative and Decelerative Consequences to Improve Accurate Reporting of DRO Contract Rewards

Kevin Giuliano, Matthew L. Israel & Cherie L. Boisvert

Judge Rotenberg Educational Center

Canton, MA USA

Introduction

The Judge Rotenberg Educational Center (JRC) operates day and residential programs for children and adults with behavior problems, including conduct disorders, emotional problems, brain injury or psychosis, autism and developmental disabilities. The basic approach taken at JRC is the use of behavioral psychology and its various technological applications, such as behavioral education, programmed instruction, precision teaching, behavior modification, behavior therapy, behavioral counseling, self-management of behavior and chart-sharing.

JRC’s clinicians and case managers develop individualized Differential Reinforcement of Other behavior (DRO) schedules for students at JRC.  These schedules, also referred to as contracts, are passed or completed when the students maintain appropriate behavior and do not exhibit inappropriate behavior for a pre-determined amount of time.  The present study was designed to increase the frequency of staff notifying the programming department on key elements of student’s behavioral treatment programs. 

The task being evaluated in this study was the accurate reporting of programmed accelerative consequences that were and were not delivered to students on a daily basis.  As with all behavior programs the consistent delivery of programmed accelerative consequences is crucial to designing effective programs.  At times these accelerative consequences were not delivered due to staffing issues or the unavailability of the programmed reward.  For example, a student’s program may call for an ice cream sundae for passing a DRO contract but the item was not available at that time.  This information allows the programming department to specify accelerative consequences that will more likely be available when an individual passes a DRO contract.  Teachers at JRC were required to submit this information for their students to the programming department on a daily basis, Monday through Friday.  The daily reports to the programming department allowed an analysis of each behavioral program’s effectiveness.  The goal of this study was to see if the JRC evaluation system would serve as accelerative and decelerative consequences when delivered on a consistent basis, and therefore improve staff’s behavior.

Method

Initially, all participants were verbally informed of a new policy requiring them to report DRO contract rewards that were and were not delivered to students daily.  The baseline period consisted of 11 weeks following the one time instruction regarding this policy.  During this period, no consequences were delivered and successful completion and failure to complete this task did not reflect on their job performance in any way.  Baseline data were collected on the rate staff members performed the assigned task correctly.

Upon completion of the 11 week baseline period, accelerative and decelerative consequences were implemented over a 7 week period.  Accelerative consequences were given in the form of a Performance Credit (PC) and decelerative consequences were given in the form of a Performance Improvement Opportunity (PIO).  The PC/PIO system is a tool developed by JRC to evaluate staff’s performance and adherence to policies and regulations.  A PC is given to a staff member whose performance is determined to be exemplary and a PIO is given to a staff member whose performance is judged to be unacceptable.  A PC reflects positively on a staff member’s employment record and a PIO is considered a negative mark on their record.  PCs and PIOs are both taken into account when considering a staff member for advancement within the company.  During the 7 week period when PCs and PIOs were implemented, PCs were given to those staff members who reported daily, the DRO contract rewards that were and were not delivered, to the programming department.  PIOs were given to the staff members who did not report daily, to the programming department. 

Upon completion of the 7 week period when the PC/PIO system was in place, the intervention was removed.  Staff members no longer received PCs or PIOs for completing or failing to complete this task but frequency data continued to be collected for an additional 7 weeks.

Participants

The participants in this study were the teachers assigned to all 17 classrooms at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center.  The median length of employment was 17.5 months.  All teachers went through an intensive two week introductory training course focused on the methods and practices commonly used by JRC.  All teachers were also required to participate in a weekly advanced training session that covered such topics as precision teaching, sign language, the use of accelerative and decelerative consequences, DRO contracts and the basic principals of behaviorism. 

Results and Discussion

Figure 1 contains a percentage chart of the number of teachers reporting the DRO contract rewards that were and were not given.  For these individuals, a verbal request to complete this task did not produce results.  The baseline data indicate that the teachers in this study reported on DRO contract on an average of 10 percent.  During the 7 week period when the intervention was in place, the desired behavior was exhibited an average of 76 percent.  During the 7 week period after the intervention was removed, the desired behavior was exhibited an average of 81 percent.   

Figure 2 contains an example of a PC/PIO form.  This form is completed by any individual evaluating another staff member’s performance.  Information found on this form include the name of the person being evaluated, the name of the person conducting the evaluation, the location of the event and the date/time of the event.  Also included on this form is a pinpoint and comment section.  The evaluator used these sections to describe the event and suggest corrective action when applicable.  

The data clearly indicate that the use of PCs and PIOs as accelerative and decelerative consequences influenced the behavior and overall performance of staff.   The data also show that removing the intervention, once the behavior was occurring at an acceptable rate, did not lead to a reduction of the behavior.  The present study demonstrated that an evaluation system targeting staff performance can lead to an improvement of behavioral programming.