Effects of responding to a name and group call on preschoolers' compliance

Abstract

We assessed teacher-child relations with respect to children's name calls, instructions, and compliance in a preschool classroom. The most frequent consequence to a child's name being called was the provision of instructions. We also observed a higher probability of compliance when children attended to a name call. Next, we evaluated the effects of teaching preschoolers to attend to their names and a group call on their compliance with typical instructions. We used a multiple baseline design across subjects and a control-group design to evaluate whether gains in compliance were a function of treatment or routine experience in preschool. Results showed that compliance increased as a function of teaching precursors for all children in the experimental group, and the effects on compliance were maintained despite a reduction of the occurrence of precursors. Moreover, it appeared that precursor teaching, not routine preschool experience, was responsible for the changes in compliance.

Keywords: compliance; maintenance; noncompliance; precursors; preschool children.

Figure 1.

The top panel depicts the percentage of particular teacher behaviors that occurred after a teacher called a child's name; the count of each behavior is denoted in parentheses. The middle panel depicts the percentage of particular child behaviors that followed name calls; the count of each particular behavior is denoted in parentheses. The bottom panel depicts the percentage of compliance with an instruction given a particular child behavior after his or her name call; each percentage was derived from the total occurrences of each particular child behavior.

Figure 2.

The left column depicts the percentage of precursors (open circles) during Baseline 1 (BL1), Teaching Precursors A, Baseline 2 (BL2), Teaching Precursors B, and Baseline 3 (BL3) for each participant in the experimental group. The dashed vertical line denotes when instructional demands were reinstated during the Teaching Precursors A condition. The right column depicts the percentage of compliance (filled circles) across conditions for each participant in the experimental group. The dashed horizontal line denotes the mean percentage of compliance per condition.

Figure 3.

The left column depicts the percentage of precursors (open circles) during Baseline 1 (BL1), Teaching Precursors A, Baseline 2 (BL2), Teaching Precursors B, and Baseline 3 (BL3) for children in the control group. The right column depicts the percentage of compliance (filled circles) across conditions for children in the control group. The third child in Classroom B is not depicted because he terminated enrollment at the preschool. The dashed horizontal line denotes the mean percentage of compliance per condition.

Figure 4.

The top panel depicts the mean percentage of precursors for each child in the control and experimental groups (white and gray circles, respectively) and the group mean percentage of precursors for control and experimental groups (white and gray bars, respectively) during Baselines 1 and 2. The bottom panel depicts the individual and group mean percentages of compliance across the control and the experimental groups during Baselines 1 and 2. Mann-Whitney U scores derived from comparing the control and the experimental group performances are also depicted.

Figure 5.

The top panel depicts the percentage of trials with precursors or partial precursors that were followed by compliance. The middle panel depicts the percentage of trials with partial precursors that were followed by compliance. The bottom panel depicts the percentage of trials with no precursors or no partial precursors that were followed by compliance. These data were collected via videotaped baseline sessions of the experimental group in Classroom A.

Figure 6.

The average probability compliance occurred given no precursor parts, one-part precursors (stop, look, and “yes” that occurred in isolation), two-part precursors (all stop and look, stop and “yes,” or look and “yes”), three-part precursors (all stop, look, and “yes,” or stop, look, and wait), and four-part precursors (all stop, look, “yes,” and wait) during Baselines 1, 2, and 3 for the experimental group in Classroom A. N/A = not applicable (no child engaged in a three- or four-part precursor during Baseline 1).

Figure 7.

The percentage of trials with full and partial precursors (filled triangles) and compliance (open squares) during Baselines 1, 2, and 3 for the experimental group in Classroom A.