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B.F. Skinner, the prominent psychologist, believed that behavior could fully understood in terms of environmental cues and results. ((Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of Learning for Instruction. (3rd ed., p. 65). Boston: Pearson.). He viewed behavior as being one of two types, respondent and operant whereas respondent was involuntary and operant was not. Ms. Stanton tried to get her student to follow a set procedure by utilizing this view. Ms. Stanton’s approach to the problem was to weaken the operant behavior. She chose to do this by removing a conditioned reinforcer to exact a fine contingent upon the response she was trying eliminate. Decisions were made in hopes that the response cost would be enough for Jefferson want to avoid the operant behavior. She used punishment as well as a pseudo-token economy to help him control his behavior.

Ms. Stanton’s behavioral goal for Jefferson was for him to not disturb his classmates with every movement. Her overall strategy was to weaken one of his most disruptive operant behaviors, his continual movement around the classroom. She felt the appropriate reinforcement was to implement a response cost at a fixed- ratio referred to as the chip strategy. Jefferson would start with seven chips at the start of the day and with each incident in which he disrupts his classmates, he loses a chip. If he is caught out of his seat after losing all his chips, his next recess and lunch are to be spent in isolation as a punishment. After collecting twenty-five chips, he is awarded a pencil. The loss of a chip would also serve as a cue to the learned behavior of not disrupting the rest of the class.

From the very beginning of the case study, it was established that Jefferson has alread...

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...ointing to the procedure can assist in encoding specificity to assist in the retrieval of the proper procedure from his long-term memory.

Another would be to access Jefferson’s metacognition at the moment he loses a chip. Too many teachers simply apply a consequence for a rule infraction without finding out why the rule was broken. Now, this does not have to be a full interrogation and it doesn’t have to be done in public. Again, it would be a bit time consuming but a couple of questions asking what he was thinking at that time could yield insight into what his motivation was (although most kids of his age typically reply with “I don’t know”). Each of the proposed strategies has the goal of making the movement around class without disruption move into the realm of automaticity. That is she wants the Jefferson to establish the habit of not disrupting class.