An Evaluation of Preference for Mode of Instruction Following Variations in Response Effort

摘要

The current study evaluated preference for mode of instruction (i.e., visual or vocal) for four children diagnosed with a language-based learning disability. Each participant was an elementary student who was initially referred to a neuropsychology clinic specializing in learning disabilities. As a part of the evaluation, measures of each participant's academic skills were collected. Following the diagnostic evaluation, each participant was referred to a behavioral psychologist to participate in this two-experiment study. In Experiment 1, preference for mode of instruction was evaluated within a concurrent schedules design across increasing task difficulty. In Experiment 2, changes in preference for mode of instruction following increases in task amount were evaluated via a progressive ratio arrangement within a concurrent schedules design. Results from both experiments showed that preference for mode of instruction can change under high-effort conditions (i.e., task difficulty and task amount).