Self-directed behavior change in children: Is it self-directed?

BEHAVIOR THERAPY 15, 501--514 (1984)

Self-Directed Behavior Change in Children: Is It Self-Directed?

ALAN M . GROSS

DANIEL A. WOJNILOWER

Emory University

The present paper examines whether children can learn to effectively manage their own behavior. Focusing on self-reinforcement strategies, studies in which children were reported to be successful and unsuccessful in their attempts to alter their own responding are examined. Special attention is given to the role played by external treatment, mediator-imposed contingencies on the effectiveness of self-management programs. Conclusions regarding the necessary conditions for successful self-control in children are presented.

Behavior modification programs have demonstrated that academic and social behavior of children can be altered through a variety of procedures. For the most part, these programs have focused upon employing external agents (parents, teachers, therapists) to arrange and administer contingencies which can be applied in a variety of settings (Rosenbaum & Drabman, 1979). However, based upon the premise that human behavior can be altered and maintained in the relative absence of immediate external feedback or support (Bandura, 1971; Thoreson & Mahoney, 1974), behavior therapists have recently devoted increased attention toward teaching children methods of changing their own behavior.

The shift away from reliance upon external agents in the treatment of child behavior problems has occurred for a number of reasons. When parents or teachers control the treatment contingencies they often miss a great deal of behavior. As such, the desired response may not be consis- tently reinforced (Kazdin, 1975). Those who administer the contingencies may also become discriminative stimuli. This results in the child performing the target behavior only in the presence of the individual who delivers the rewards. Moreover, when children control their own behavior,

This research was supported by grant #HD17090 from the National Institutes of Health. The authors thank Thomas A. Brigham for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. Requests for reprints should be sent to Alan M. Gross, Department of Psy- chology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322.

50 1 0005-7894/84/0501-051451.00/0 Copyright 1984 by Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy

AU rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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adults can spend more time teaching other skills (O'Leary & Dubey, 1979). Additionally, it has been suggested that teaching children to control their own behavior might result in stronger maintenance effects than those observed when contingencies have been administered by external agents.

As a behavior change strategy, self-control training with children has involved a variety of procedures (e.g., self-monitoring, self-evaluation, self-reinforcement). However, self-reinforcement is generally recognized as the component most integral to the development of self-control. Self- reinforcement refers to the process by which individuals, in the relative absence of controlling influences regulated by others, increase and maintain their own behavior both by freely imposing certain contingencies for the self-administration of reinforcing stimuli and by exhibiting full control over available reinforcers (Jones, Kazdin, & Nelson, 1977). In an applied setting this usually translates into teaching children the following set of responses: monitoring their own behavior, establishing behavior performance criteria (response contingency), selecting a reinforcer that normally is freely available, and taking the reinforcer only following the performance of the target behavior.

Numerous studies on the effectiveness of self-reinforcement procedures with children have been conducted. In a recent review of this area, O'Leary and Dubey (1979) concluded that these procedures can produce effects equivalent to, or better than, those achieved when contingencies are externally administered. However, further scrutiny of these studies reveals that the reported examples of children's self-control may not be as free of externally administered contingencies as this statement implies (Gross & Drabman, 1982). In fact, externally imposed contingencies may be a critical variable in successful self-management with children.

The purpose of the present paper is to examine the necessary conditions for effective self-directed behavior change in children. Focusing on self- reinforcement strategies, studies in which youngsters successfully and un- successfully altered their own behavior through self-administered contingencies will be explored in order to determine the relative contribution of mediator-controlled contingencies in children's self-control.

Efficacy of Self-Reinforcement There exist today a large number of studies examining the effectiveness

of self-reward as a behavior change strategy with children. Typically, elementary school children serve as subjects and are afforded the opportunity to reward themselves for appropriately engaging in both academic and general classroom behavior.

Several studies have investigated the relative efficacy of self-reinforcement and external reinforcement systems. Glynn (1970) monitored the daily history test performance of four classes of ninth-grade girls. Every day, the teacher read aloud the test answers, and the girls noted on the top of their papers the number of problems they scored correctly. FoP lowing this phase, one group of youths received token reinforcers at the rate of one for every four correct answers (total of 5 tokens possible per test). A second group awarded themselves one to five tokens based on

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what they thought their test performance merited. The third class of girls was yoked to the teacher-determined token group and given tokens based on their performance. The remaining subjects did not receive tokens. It was reported that students in the teacher- and self-delivered token groups exhibited the largest improvements in academic performance. Moreover, there was no significant difference in performance between the self-delivered and externally delivered token subjects. Bolstad and Johnson (1972), Felixbrod and O'Leary (1973, 1974), and Frederiksen and Frederiksen (1975) also have reported self-reinforcement to be equally effective as externally delivered reinforcers in altering behavior.

Ballard and Glynn (1975) improved story writing in elementary school children using self-reinforcement. In a multiple baseline design, the number of sentences, number of action words, and number of describing words used in the children's daily story-writing exercise were monitored. The children were then instructed to self-record the occurrence of these target behaviors. This phase was followed by the sequential introduction of self- reinforcement across target behaviors. Although self-recording had little effect on writing behavior, the addition of self-reinforcement resulted in substantial increases in the number of sentences written as well as in the usage of action and describing words. Additionally, independent ratings of the children's essays reflected a large improvement in story-writing ability.

Self-reinforcement has also been shown to be more effective than self- imposed response cost in altering the reading behavior of second-graders (Humphrey, Karoly, & Kirschenbaum, 1978). In a counterbalanced ABAC design, the children either self-delivered tokens for correct responses or fined themselves tokens for errors on reading workbook assignments. Although both self-management procedures produced increases in work accuracy, the children performed best during the self-reinforcement condition. In contrast, Kaufman and O'Leary (1972) found self-imposed response cost and self-reinforcement to be equally effective in decreasing disruptive behavior in adolescents in a psychiatric hospital school.

In addition to the modification of academic responding, self-reinforcement has been used to alter children's disruptive behavior. Bolstad and Johnson (1972) monitored "on-task" behavior in a second-grade classroom. Following baseline, the youngsters received training in self-recording, self-evaluation, and self-reinforcement. At various intervals while the children worked, a tape recorder sounded a tone. The children were told, upon hearing this tone, to note on a data sheet if they were on task. Subsequently, they awarded themselves rewards based on the number of intervals on task. This procedure resulted in a large decrease in disruptive behavior. Glynn and Thomas (1974) and Glynn, Thomas, and Shee (1973) have reported similar findings.

The Role of External Treatment Mediators

As can be seen from the previous material, numerous investigators have suggested that self- and external reinforcement systems in children seem to be equally effective in exerting positive influence upon academic

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and disruptive behavior. However, Bass (1972) has argued that self-reinforcement necessitates that children both understand and believe they have complete control over all contingencies and can thereby "cheat" or engage in noncontingent self-reinforcement behavior without bringing about any other contingent external consequences of either a reinforcing or punishing nature. If these conditions are not met, the child is not exhibiting self-control, but is environmentally controlled. An important question is whether the majority of self-reinforcement studies with children meet these criteria.

Edgar and Clement (1980) had four fourth-grade boys meet with a teacher in a tutoring class three times weekly for a 1-hour period. During two week-long baseline phases, students did not receive any programmed rewards. In the treatment conditions, the order of presenting self- and teacher-imposed contingency systems was counterbalanced across students. Regardless of the condition in effect, a tape recorder emitted beeps on a variable interval schedule of 2 minutes. These beeps signaled when rewards were to be either self-delivered by the student or by the teacher provided that the student was engaged in the appropriate target behavior at that moment. At the conclusion of each class session, the student recorded the number of points appearing on the point counter on his desk. Points were accumulated across sessions and could be traded for back- up reinforcers at the end of each 2-week treatment phase.

The authors concluded that self-reinforcement was more effective than teacher-controlled reinforcement in increasing academic behaviors. How- ever, scrutiny of the procedure employed reveals that environmental factors may have influenced the effectiveness of self-reinforcement procedures. During baseline, for example, children were paid one dollar for simply attending all three tutoring sessions in any given week. Further, during self-reinforcement phases, students were able to engage in self- reinforcement only when beeps were emitted from a tape recorder. This constraint, in conjunction with the teacher's ease in observing whether or not reinforcers were being administered contingently, may have influenced the students to self-reinforce only at appropriate times. Finally, inaccurate self-administration of token points was prevented by the teacher watching each student record the points. Taken together, environmental variables all but eliminated the children's ability to discontinue their work and self-reinforce noncontingently. Similar studies have encountered many of the same problems (Clement et al., 1978; Fantuzzo & Clement, 1981; Fantuzzo, Harrell, & McLeod, 1979; Glynn, 1970; Lovitt & Curtiss, 1969).

Bolstad and Johnson (1972) examined the relative efficacy of self- and external contingency systems upon the disruptive behavior of first- and second-grade children. Students who exhibited high rates of such behavior were either placed in a control condition or assigned to one of three experimental groups after prebaseline measures of classroom disruptive- ness were obtained. Those children in the experimental conditions were exposed to a reinforcement system in which an adult evaluated the children's behavior and then dispensed reinforcers contingent upon that eval-

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uation. In the next phase, pupils in two self-regulation groups were taught to record their own disruptive behavior and self-reinforce based upon scientific criteria, while the third group remained under adult-controlled reinforcement.

This procedure resulted in large decreases in disruptive behavior for children in both the self- and adult-regulated conditions. However, prior exposure to an external contingency confounds these findings for the self- reinforcement group. Other sources of environmental influence which may have contributed to the effectiveness of self-reinforcement included informing children that they should refrain from self-administering points unless they emitted less than a specified number of disruptive behaviors, penalizing students if their self-evaluations did not match observer evaluations, and observing pupils as they took prizes from the reward box. Finally, the presence of observers who had previously dispensed points throughout the self-regulatory phases may have served as cues for children to employ particular self-reinforcement standards. Many of these same confounding environmental variables can be found in other studies of self-control in children (Drabman, Spitalnik, & O'Leary, 1973; Freder- iksen & Frederiksen, 1975; Glynn et al., 1973; Kaufman & O'Leary, 1972; Santogrossi, O'Leary, Romanczyk, & Kaufman, 1973; Wood & Flynn, 1978).

Felixbrod and O'Leary (1973, 1974) compared the effects of self-determined and externally imposed reinforcement systems upon math productivity and on-task behavior of lower elementary school pupils. Chil- dren were assigned to self-, external-, and no-reinforcement conditions. Children in the self-reinforcement group were allowed to choose their own performance standard, and this standard was applied to a matched counterpart in the external reward condition.

The authors reported the two reinforcement groups to be equally effi- cacious as well as significantly better than the control condition at pro- ducing increases in productivity. However, analysis of the methodology employed reveals that children in the self-reinforcement condition were unable to meet the criteria for self-reinforcement; that is, they were unable to self-administer reinforcers noncontingently. More specifically, the children circled their self-selected performance criteria on a piece of paper prior to working on the math problems and then had to hand in their answers for grading before rewards were delivered. Teacher-imposed re- strictions on noncontingent self-reinforcement are also found in studies by Ballard and Glynn (1975), Brownell, Colletti, Ersner-Hershfield, Hershfield, and Wilson, (1977), Dickerson and Creedon (1981), and Hum- phrey et al. (1978).

Finally, Wall (1982) examined the effects of systematic self-monitoring and self-reinforcement components upon the test performance of fourth- grade children. Four different classes participated and each was assigned to a different condition. After three baseline sessions, self-reinforcement procedures were introduced into two of the groups. One class had previously engaged in systematic self-monitoring and continued to do so.


Conversely, the other self-determined reinforcement group at no time engaged in self-monitoring behavior. Students in both of these conditions were instructed to self-administer token points at the end of each contingency session based upon what they thought was appropriate. Pupils in the performance control and self-monitoring-alone conditions were reinforced noncontingently by the experimenter. Points were exchanged for back-up reinforcers at the conclusion of the experiment.

Self-reinforcement resulted in significant increases in test performance whether or not children had systematically self-monitored. This study, however, is not without environmental influences upon self-controlling behavior. The children were required to work on test materials for a given length of time and thus could not simply stop working and engage in self- reinforcement. The students also were instructed prior to self-reinforcement sessions that they would only be able to reinforce themselves af- terward and that a certain number of points was necessary to obtain back- up reinforcers. Further, this exchange system was teacher determined. The children also turned in their answer sheets and entered their test scores on cumulative record sheets. Together, these procedures facilitated teacher surveillance of students' self-monitoring and self-reinforcement. Thus, the results of this study should be viewed with some reservation. For similar reasons, findings obtained by Wall and Bryant (1979) should also be examined with caution.

The studies reviewed clearly indicate that virtually all investigations of children's self-reinforcement involve externally imposed contingencies. Several studies, however, have been conducted in which an attempt was exerted to increase the degree to which the children were free to engage in noncontingent self-reinforcement without experiencing mediator-imposed aversive contingencies.

Santogrossi et al. (1973) investigated the effects of a self-reinforcement program on the behavior of disruptive adolescents. Following baseline, the youngsters were told to self-evaluate their classroom behavior. They were then allowed to award themselves points (exchangeable for back-up reinforcers) based on these evaluations. The children emitted baseline rates of disruptive responding while awarding themselves high levels of reinforcement.

Speidel and Tharp (1980) taught children to check their math work daily and to report the number of problems correctly completed. Sub- sequently, the children earned reinforcers contingent on the report of a perfect paper. It was observed that children's reports of math assignment accuracy were fairly accurate in the no-reinforcement condition. However, the youngsters greatly inflated their scores when these reports resulted in reinforcers. Moreover, when half of the children were exposed to an accuracy contingency, their rate of inflated reports returned to baseline levels. The children who did not experience the accuracy contingency continued to inflate their performance reports.

Hundert and Batstone (1978) monitored the math performance of four boys in a special education class. The youths were taught to monitor their

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workbook performance and received points exchangeable for free time based on their reported accuracy. It was noted that the youths were ex- aggerating their performance and, as such, engaging in noncontingent self- reinforcement. The authors eliminated this problem by instituting a sur- Veillance procedure and fining the boys for inaccurate scoring.

A number of investigators have also found that giving children the opportunity to select reinforcement contingencies and to self-reinforce results in the choice of lenient performance criteria (Felixbrod & O'Leary, 1973, 1974). This allows the youth to maximize rewards and minimize performance. Brownell et al. (1977) and Jones and Ollendick (1979) reported that exposing children to substantial external demand to choose stringent standards alters their tendency to select lenient criteria. How- ever, these effects extinguish rapidly (Jones & Evans, 1980).

The studies reviewed reveal that virtually all reports of children successfully controlling their own behavior using self-control skills have been contaminated by environmental sources of control. These influences have been manifested in many ways. Self-determined contingencies have been introduced following prior exposure to some period of external reinforcement. External agents have also monitored children's behavior as well as their self-administration of rewards. Explicit instructions have been used to inform children how target behaviors were to be performed and the form in which rewards were to be self-delivered. Children have been frequently instructed when to engage in self-reinforcing behavior. More- over, explicit control over target behaviors has been environmentally imposed. For example, changes from one academic activity to another have been teacher determined, and verbal praise for appropriate behavior and verbal reprimands for inappropriate behavior have been utilized to support low levels of disruptive behavior. Still other less prevalent environmental factors influencing self-reinforcement have included reward- ing children for participating in baseline phases, penalizing children for inaccurate self-evaluations, limiting the range of points that youngsters could award themselves, and employing teachers and/or experimenters both to specify token exchange rates and to administer reinforcers contingently.

A final external influence affecting self-reinforcement behavior that war- rants discussion is the role of implicit demand characteristics. Orne (1962) has suggested that subject performance in any psychological experiment can be conceptualized in terms of problem-solving behavior. At some level, subjects analyze the task at hand in order "to ascertain the true purpose of the experiment and respond in a manner which will support the hypotheses being tested" (p. 779). While all external influences present in self-control research can be viewed as demand characteristics affecting the dependent variable(s), it is the more subtle demand characteristics which tend to be overlooked. For example, simply informing a child that he/she has been chosen from a larger group to participate in an experiment (Bolstad & Johnson, 1972; Lovitt & Curtiss, 1969) or treating a child as an "employee" with a "job" to do (Fantuzzo & Clement, 1981; Fantuzzo

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et al., 1979) may well have functioned as a cue both to increase children's motivation to please the experimenter and to suggest that compliance with experimental procedures was expected.

Demand characteristics cannot be eliminated from self-control research. Nevertheless, they may play a significant role in the outcome of such studies and therefore must be monitored. Two ways of assessing the potential ability of demand characteristics to alter behavior are to utilize a postexperimental questionnaire or a preinquiry technique (Orne, 1969). In a postexperimental questionnaire, subjects are interviewed after the experiment is over. Self-control researchers could use this procedure to obtain "subjects '" perceptions regarding the extent to which they felt free of environmental constraints on their behavior (Wilson & O'Leary, 1980). For example, children could be asked if they thought they would get in trouble if they stopped working and took a reward or what they thought would happen if they took too much reward or simply took rewards without doing any of the suggested task.

Alternatively, a preinquiry technique employs one group of subjects to predict the experimental results without actually going through the experimental process. Preinquiry subjects serve as a regular control group, performing on the dependent measures in the same fashion as would subjects who actually participated in the procedures. These preinquiry findings are then compared to data obtained from subjects actually exposed to experimental methods. The smaller the difference between these two sets of findings, the more likely it will be that demand characteristics influenced subject behavior.

While relatively easy to implement, neither of these procedures has been employed in self-control research with children. However, recent investigations have begun to examine the differential effects of demand characteristics often found in self-control procedures (Jones & Evans, 1980; Jones & Ollendick, 1979; Speidel & Tharp, 1980). In these studies, external controls are purposely included within the experimental methodology and then are taken into account when interpreting the data. While these investigations have only attended to the more general types of external demand which have influenced children's self-controlling behavior, they most certainly are a step in the right direction.

Generalization

Self-management skills have frequently been advocated as a method of enhancing generalization (Stokes & Baer, 1977). While 15 classes of generalization have been enumerated (Drabman, Hammer, & Rosenbaum, 1979), time generalization (maintenance) has received the most attention in self-control research with children.

Drabman et al. (1973) developed a procedure to teach and maintain accurate self-reinforcement. In a classroom setting, dn-task behavior was monitored. Following baseline, the teacher evaluated and reinforced (tokens) each child for appropriate classroom responding. The youngsters were then asked to rate their own behavior and to self-reinforce at the

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end of specific time intervals. They were told that if their evaluation matched that of the teacher, then they would earn bonus tokens. Over time, the matching of teacher and student ratings was faded by gradually selecting fewer children each day for matching. When matching was dis- continued, the children independently rated their responding and reinforced themselves with tokens based on these evaluations. The procedures resulted in accurate self-reinforcement which was maintained over 12 days. Robertson, Simon, Pachman, and Drabman (1979)and Turkowitz, O'Leary, and Ironsmith (1975) have replicated these findings.

Maintenance of behavior change following exposure to self-reinforcement training has also been observed by Wood and Flynn (1978). Pre- delinquent youths in a group home were taught a number of room-cleaning responses. Following baseline and instruction-to-clean phases, a token system based on experimenter evaluation of behavior was implemented. Half of the youngsters were then taught to monitor the occurrence of the target behavior and self-reinforce contingent on appropriate performance. The others continued to receive tokens from the experimenters based upon their performance evaluations. When contingencies on room cleaning were removed, youths who had experienced training to self-administer reinforcers maintained high levels of on-task behavior over a 60-day period. Youngsters exposed only to externally administered tokens showed a substantial decline in room-cleaning behavior.

Of the numerous self-control studies with children, few present data on time generalization. The four studies reported here suggest that self-control training may facilitate the maintenance of behavior change. However, follow-up periods were relatively short (12-60 days). Moreover, many of the environmental influences affecting self-control behavior cited earlier were also operating in these investigations and very well could have contributed to the long-term effects noted. More important, other investigators have failed to observe maintenance (Felixbrod and O'Leary, 1974; Santogrossi et al., 1973). Although the evidence seems favorable, the issue is by no means clear. Further research with longer follow-up periods is needed.

CONCLUSIONS Environmental sources of control appear to exist in all demonstrations

of children's self-control. While the number of environmental variables observed may vary, there do appear to be specific environmental conditions that must exist if children are to manage their own behavior successfully. A contingency on accuracy of self-reinforcement must be applied. If children discriminate that there are no aversive contingencies for noncontingent self-reinforcement, they will rate their behavior as appropriate and self-deliver reinforcers regardless of whether they are performing the target behavior. This creates a serious problem because it results in contingent reinforcement for inappropriate behavior.

The role of environmental variables in children's self-control is not denied by investigators in this area. They argue (e.g., Thoresen & Ma-

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honey, 1974) that it is the relative frequency (absence), timing, form, and magnitude o f such factors that differentiate self- f rom externally controlled behavior. As such, the methodology used to study self-control in children has generally involved at tempts to eliminate as many externally controlled contingencies as possible and then to observe whether a child could successfully self-administer a re inforcement contingency. It is clear that even i f all obvious, immediate , externally adminis tered reinforcement contingencies could be controlled (and this literature review suggests that this is not possible), such control would not negate their effect either on behavior or on a child's learning history (Skinner, 1953). Moreover , this view also raises the quest ion o f the number o f external contingencies that can exist while still allowing us to call the child's self-administration of a reinforcer a demonst ra t ion o f self-control. Unfortunately, this appears to be a quest ion more suited to a philosophical analysis o f behavior rather than an experimental analysis o f behavior.

In an early discussion o f self-control, Skinner (1953) made an impor tant distinction between controlling responses and controlled responses. He suggested that a controlling response manipulated variables in a manner that resulted in an alteration o f the probabil i ty o f occurrence o f a future behavior. He called the affected future behavior the controlled response. When individuals emit a controlling response in order to alter the behavior o f another person, it is labeled behavior modification. However , when individuals emit controlling responses in order to modify their own responding, it is labeled self-control. The apparent difference in these two situations depends f rom where the controlling response is seen to origi- nate.

Identifying a controlling response in a behavior chain is not always a simple task. More impor tan t the segment o f the response chain that is observed can influence the process o f determining the controlling response. This review suggests that children who exhibit improvemen t in academic performance following an intervent ion in which they are taught to self-monitor, self-evaluate, and self-reward for the display o f appropriate academic behavior are frequently seen as exhibiting self-control. The children's self-monitoring, self-evaluation, and self-reward behaviors are considered controlling responses affecting their school work. However , closer inspection o f this situation reveals that in the absence o f a teacher- imposed accuracy contingency, the children would award themselves reinforcers noncontingently. Moreover , in order for the children to use their self-control skills effectively, the teacher must moni tor their behavior. Does the requirement that there be a teacher-mediated contingency suggest that the teacher is displaying the controlling response and the children's behavior is not self-controlled? After all, it is the children's controlling response (noncontingent self-reward) that results in the occurrence o f the accuracy contingency.

The example presented illustrates that a t tempting to identify a controlling response as originating f rom the responding individual or f rom the envi ronment is an arbitrary decision at best. A more fruitful approach

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to the study of children's self-control would be to expand our analysis of the phenomenon to include an examination of the role played by environmental or external variables. Consideration of these factors would help to determine the type of environmental mechanisms that support children's attempts to regulate their own behavior. Recognizing the impor- tance of these environmental influences would, in all likelihood, increase the personal influence a child has over the regulation of his or her behavior. Such a point of view acknowledges the reciprocal nature that exists between an organism and its environment. That is, not only does environment influence behavior, but behavior alters the environment. Children who are aware of the role that others play in sustaining their attempts to modify their own behavior will have a stronger chance of arranging the environment to support their efforts than will youths who merely know how to self-monitor, self-evaluate, and self-reinforce.

Evaluation of environmental variables in self-regulatory processes in children should also increase our ability to account for the wide variation in the manner and strength of responding across children in the apparent absence of external control. Examination of a child's social environment and his or her reinforcement history may lead to the identification of reinforcers influencing self-regulatory behavior that are not obvious because of temporal distance from the target responses.

The suggested goal of self-control training for children is to teach them to be effective managers of their own behavior. However, most applications of self-control training with children have simply involved teaching them to self-administer a program therapists or teachers would apply if they assumed the role of primary treatment mediator. Few attempts have been made to provide a systematic program of instruction designed to facilitate the acquisition and utilization of behavioral procedures in situations beyond the one initially targeted for treatment.

Gross, Brigham, Hopper, and Bologna (1980) taught predelinquent youths, aged 11-15, a course in behavior modification. The youngsters were required to read 10 lessons on the principles and procedures of behavior analysis and to complete study guides and quizzes on each unit. Additionally, the youngsters were required to conduct a self-change project and a behavior modification project to alter another person's behavior. It was reported that the youths were able to learn the fundamentals of behavioral technology and to successfully alter their own as well as another person's behavior. Learning these behavior change skills was associated with a reduction in delinquent behavior. Moreover, unlike many youngsters who respond negatively to attempts by external agents to alter their behavior, the youngsters in this investigation displayed a large degree of enthusiasm for the procedure. The children indicated that participation in the training program resulted in their learning skills that increased their success in both social and academic situations. Gross (1983) has also reported using this approach to increase medication compliance in youngsters with diabetes.

These studies by Gross represent a departure from traditional children's


self-control training. He has argued that teaching the fundamentals of behavior analysis in combination with practical experience in the appli- cation of the associated techniques may provide youngsters with a set of readily generalizable management skills. Providing this general working knowledge may not only allow children to alter their own behavior, but also enable them to modify the behavior of others who may serve as cues for inappropriate responding. While these studies are preliminary attempts, they do suggest a self-control training approach that more closely approximates the goal of teaching children to manage effectively their behavior and environment. It may prove fruitful to direct future self- management research efforts toward determining the full range of appli- cability of this intervention strategy.

It appears that it may be time to stop being concerned with who ad- ministers the reinforcement contingency as our criterion for self-management behavior. It is simply not possible to eliminate external influences on responding. Behavior is a result of reciprocal interactions with the external environment. As such, the question becomes not whether children can learn to administer contingencies, but whether they can learn to identify and manipulate response-consequence relationships.

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RECEIVED: December 2, 1983 FINAL ACCEPTANCE: April 12, 1984

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