ABSTRACT
In both pre-school and public schools, the reinforcement contingency plays an exceedingly important role. If the reinforcement contingency does not operate, education simply may not proceed. Five successive stages of the design exemplify the basic logic of laboratory studies of operant conditioning, but now in a pre-school setting. The first stage consists of observation of some behavior of the child under study and of its social consequences from teachers. The second stage begins with the teacher changing her pattern of responsiveness to the child's behavior. The third stage involves a return to the conditions of the baseline period of observation. The fourth stage is basically a reinstating of the experimental procedures which had proved effective during the second stage. In the fifth stage, the transition from reinforcement of every instance of the desired behavior to only occasional reinforcement is accomplished—gradually. The automatic reinforcement contingencies of the pre-school situation will take over the behavior.
