Increasing Task Engagement Using Preference or Choice-Making Some Behavioral and Methodological Factors Affecting Their Efficacy as Classroom Interventions

Frequent reprimands, low expectations, and infrequent praise characterize the daily school experiences of many students who display problem behaviors. This review evaluates preference and choice-making as possible interventions for improving these school experiences. Findings from 15 studies suggest that prefer-ence and choice-making may improve both academic perfor-mance and behavior. However, an underlying behavioral mechanism may more parsimoniously account for the effects attributed to each intervention. Moreover, the effects attributed to choice-making appear to vary with the type of methodological procedure used to control for preference. Teachers employing preference assessments when using choice-making are more likely to improve a student’s task engagement than those relying on choice-making alone. CHILDREN EXHIBITING PROBLEM BEHAVIORS EX-perience a type of school day that is vastly different from that of their typical peers (e.g., Cullinan & Sabornie, 2004). Inter-actions with their teachers consist largely of commands, at a level twice that for typical peers (Shores et al., 1993). They are given far fewer opportunities by teachers to respond aca-demically and, hence, display far fewer correct responses (e.g., Sutherland, Alder, & Gunter, 2003; Van Acker, Grant, & Henry, 1996). Praise is rarely given. Instead, these children receive far more reprimands, which in turn lead to increas-ingly noncompliant behavior (Gunter, Denny, Jack, Shores, & Nelson, 1993). On any given school day, children exhib-iting problem behavior experience a curriculum of “non-instruction ” (Gunter et al., 1993, p. 265), low teacher ex-pectations, less task engagement and involvement in the classroom, and fewer positive interactions with the teache