EFFECTS OF IMPOSED POSTFEEDBACK DELAYS IN PROGRAMMED INSTRUCTION

• Published in: Journal of applied behavior analysis Vol. 27; no. 3; pp. 483 - 491
• Main Authors: Crosbie, John, Kelly, Glenn
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 1994; Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
• Subjects: Behavior Patterns; Biological and medical sciences; College Students; Computer Assisted Instruction; computer-based instruction; Contingency Management; delay; Education; Educational psychology; Feedback; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Higher Education; Instructional Effectiveness; Learning; multiple schedule; Programmed Instruction; Programmed Instructional Materials; Psychological Patterns; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Psychopedagogics. Didactics; Social research; Student Attitudes; Teaching Methods; Time Delay; Time Factors (Learning); Human; Programmed education; Acquisition process; Reinforcement contingency; Higher education; Young adult; Intellectual learning; Reinforcement delay; Feedback regulation; Instrumental conditioning; Computer assisted teaching; Student
• ISSN: 0021-8855; 1938-3703
• DOI: 10.1901/jaba.1994.27-483

Imposed postfeedback delays promote discrimination training; the present experiments determined whether they also improve performance in programmed instruction. In two experiments, college students completed 45 sets of Holland and Skinner's (1961) programmed text on behavior analysis in a computerized format in a three‐component multiple schedule. In Experiment 1, the conditions were (a) no delay between questions, (b) a 10‐s delay after each question (noncontingent delay), and (c) a 10‐s delay after each question answered incorrectly (contingent delay). Noncontingent delay produced better performance than no delay and contingent delay. To determine whether performance increased in the noncontingent delay condition because subjects studied the material during delay periods, Experiment 2 tested three conditions: (a) no delay between questions, (b) a 10‐s delay after each question (noncontingent delay), and (c) a 10‐s delay after each question with the screen blank during the delay period. Noncontingent delay produced better performance than no delay, but there was no difference in performance between no delay and noncontingent delay with blank screen. Hence, noncontingent delay improved performance because students used delay periods to study. Furthermore, subjects preferred noncontingent delay to the other conditions, and session time increased only slightly.