Teaching three techniques of behavior modification to nonprofessionals

Modeling, lecturing, and a combination of modeling and lecturing were compared to a no-treatment control group to see which method was the most effective in teaching applied behavioral techniques to nonprofessionals. The behavioral techniques taught were praising a child for appropriate behaviors; ignoring a child for inappropriate, nonaggressive behaviors) and placing a child in timeout for inappropriate, aggressive behaviors. Subjects were college students unfamiliar with applied behavioral techniques. Both overall posttest responses and responses in the three subcategories of “praise," "ignore," and "timeout" showed consistently significant treatment effects. The overall posttest responses and the subcategory of "praise" items showed significant differences between the three experimental groups and the control group but no significant differences among the experimental groups. Significant differences were found between the control group and the two experimental groups, lecturing and lecturing-modeling, on "ignore" items: and between the control group and the lecturing-modeling group on "timeout" items. Several implications of these results were discussed