Increasing Peer Praise of Socially Rejected Delinquent Youth: Effects of Cooperation And

Increasing Peer Praise of Socially Rejected Delinquent Youth: Effects of Cooperation and Acceptance

This study assessed the effects of positive peer reporting (PPR) on the cooperative behaviors and peer acceptance of three socially rejected, delinquent youths in residential care. PPR involved rewarding classroom peers with token points for publicly praising the social behavior of target students. A nonconcurrent, multiple baseline was used to assess the effects of the procedure. Results indicated that PPR increased the use of cooperative statements made to peers. For all three students, PPR also led to increases in their peer status. Social validity measures indicated high-treatment acceptability and a match between the amount of cooperative behavior emitted by participants and randomly selected classmates. Findings support the use of peers as sources of reinforcement for a rejected youth’s prosocial behavior.

Peers are powerful social influences across the age span, but are especially influential during childhood. Child researchers have consistently demonstrated peer-mediated behavioral effects since the 1930s (Chamberlain & Friman, 1997; Dishion, Andrews & Crosby, 1995; Dishion, Patterson, Stoolmiller & Skinner, 1991; Parten, 1932; Patterson, Reid & Dishion, 1992). Researches have shown that children can be taught to use a variety of techniques to influence the behavior of their peers in a variety of settings. These techniques include the use of praise to influence preference (Patterson & Anderson, 1964), monitoring and providing points to influence social interactions (Carden-Smith & Fowler, 1984; Doughterty, Fowler & Paine, 1985) and withholding attention to influence disruption (Broussard & Northup, 1997; Lewis & Sugai, 1996; Northup et al., 1995, 1997).

Examination of these studies reveals a broad range of empirical demonstrations of peer-based interventions for child problems. Peer influence is multifaceted, however, and the number and type of problems children face in settings with peers is impossible to tabulate. The size and quality of the extant literature notwithstanding, much work remains to be done.

For example, although the potential prosocial influence of peer praise was established years ago (Patterson & Anderson, 1964), peer approval, the general category to which praise belongs, is usually studied in terms of its potential to reinforce antisocial behavior (Chamberlain & Friman, 1997; Dishion et al., 1991, 1995; Patterson et al., 1992), rather than using it to reinforce the prosocial activity of other children. Additionally, although rejected children have been a frequent target of peer-based interventions, most research focuses on younger children who live at home. There are a few experimental studies of peer-based treatment for rejected adolescents in out-of-home placements.

Our research group has begun contributing to the literature in this area by applying a peer praise-based procedure to social problems of rejected adolescents in residential care. The procedure, positive peer reporting (PPR) involves rewarding children for publicly reporting positive features of a rejected peer’s behavior. In the initial study, PPR improved the classroom-based social interactions and social acceptance of a highly rejected 13-year-old girl (Ervin, Miller & Friman, 1996). In an extension of PPR, similar results were obtained with a 6- year-old, peer-rejected girl in a regular classroom (Ervin, Johnston & Friman, 1998). In two additional extensions, PPR improved the home-based interactions of a rejected 15-year-old boy (Bowers, McGinnis, Ervin & Friman, 119a) and social interactions and acceptance of four other rejected group home-based teenage boys (Bowers, Woods, Carlyon & Friman, 1996b). Additionally, Bowers, et al (1996b) noted that improvements in social interactions were accompanied by sharp reductions in problem behavior.

Although we have repeatedly demonstrated the beneficial effects of PPR on dyadic categories of social behavior (i.e., positive and negative interactions), we have yet to assess what specific aspects of rejected children’s behavior change as a function of PPR. The adults (teachers and houseparents) participating in the previous studies reported the most obvious change in the rejected child’s behavior is increased cooperation with peers. Given the frequency of these anecdotal reports and the importance of cooperation in group activities, a logical next step for this line of research is to determine empirically whether PPR influences the cooperation of rejected children. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effect of PPR on the class participation of three socially-rejected children during cooperative learning activities in a residential school setting. Sociometric status, comparison norms and treatment acceptability ratings were also assessed to evaluate further the effects of PPR. Method

Setting

The study was conducted in a middle school of a residential program for delinquent and predelinquent adolescents in the American Midwest. The program uses the Teaching Family Model (Phillips, Phillips, Fixsen & Wolf, 1971), which involves awarding points for appropriate social and academic skills that are exchanged for a range of privileges at home and school. The setting was an eighth-grade math class consisting of nine students and one teacher. According to the teacher’s normal routine, cooperative learning activities were conducted three times per week, with the class divided into three groups (Mulryan, 1994; Tateyama Sniezek, 1990). During these activities, the groups were instructed by the teacher to cooperatively complete multiskill assignments.

Participants

Three students were referred to the consultant by the consultee, a female math teacher with 10 years of experience, because of disruptive behavior during cooperative learning activities. The first author, a male predoctoral intern, participated in the study as both consultant and secondary observer.

Fred was a 13-year-old African-American male who was placed in residential treatment by a juvenile court because of alcohol dependence and repeated arrests for gang activity, arson, battery and drug possession and sale. He was described by the teacher as verbally abusive and argumentative toward other students.

Trish was an obese, 10-year-old Caucasian female who was placed by the Department of Social Services. Records indicated a history of sexual abuse by her stepfather and sexual acting out behavior. At school, Trish was frequently teased by other students and missed class often because of somatic complaints or disruptive peer relations that led to office referrals. Mick was a 13-year-old African-American male placed in residential treatment by the Department of Social Services. His records indicated a long history of explosive anger, property damage and aggression towards adults and peers. Mick was described by the teacher as a socially anxious youth who resisted interaction with other students.

Response Measurement

Sociometric Ratings. Social status was assessed immediately before and after the study was completed by asking the entire class to complete an anonymous sociometric rating (Oden, 1980). This instrument listed each of the nine students along with a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much). Students were asked to circle the number that best described “how much they would like to spend free time” with each of their classmates. Social status was determined by calculating the median score among the ratings of their peers. Pretest scores indicated that the social status of the three participants (Fred, Mick and Trish) were the lowest among all students.

Cooperative Statements. The primary dependent variable was the percentage of observed intervals during which each participant emitted a cooperative statement toward a peer. Cooperative statements were defined as an audible verbalization toward a peer that reflected collaboration, participation or encouragement (adapted from Guevremon & Foster, 1993). Given the nature of the cooperative learning task, these statements included sharing answers, asking questions, assisting with problems or any other task-related conversation using a pleasant tone of voice. Excluded were intervals that contained no interactions or only negative interactions, such as statements (e.g., “shut up”), gestures (e.g., making a face), teasing or physically isolating one’s self from the group by looking away or putting one’s head down.

Cooperative statements were directly observed during 30-minute cooperative learning tasks using a partial interval-recording procedure. The second author served as the primary observer. Within each continuous 15- second interval, the observer recorded the occurrence or nonoccurrence of cooperative statements toward peers. Intervals were cued by listening to audiotaped 15-second prompts through an earphone.

The consultant served as a secondary observer during 45% of the observations. Before the study, both observers practiced with the behavioral definitions during nonexperimental observations until interobserver agreement (IOA) was at least 85%. IOA was calculated by dividing the number of agreements on the occurrence or nonoccurrence of cooperative statements within a 15-second interval by the total number of observed intervals and multiplying by 100 (Hartmann, 1977). The mean IOA for observations used in the present study was 85% (range, 71-100%).

Social Validation. The social validity of PPR was evaluated in two ways. First, the cooperative statements of randomly selected peers were attained during 11 observations for comparison purposes. Second, the acceptability of the treatment was measured by asking the teacher to complete the Intervention Rating Profile- 15 (IRP-15; Martens, Witt, Elliott & Darveaux, 1985) at the conclusion of the study. The IRP-15 consists of 15 items which are rated on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). Witt and Elliott (1985) compiled numerous investigations that demonstrated the validity of the IRP-15 as a measure of differential acceptability of several intervention variables such as treatment type, time requirements and reported effectiveness. Procedures

Participant approval was obtained from the participating institution and written consent from each of the participant’s legal guardians was obtained. All data were collected during cooperative learning activities conducted on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday of each week. These activities were already a part of the teacher’s normal routine and required groups of three or four students to complete math worksheets cooperatively. To ensure variable seating throughout the study, group participants were selected each day according to 1 of 10 randomly selected seating charts.

Baseline. During baseline, cooperative statements were observed under normal classroom conditions. After cooperative learning activities, the participants received no feedback from peers regarding their behavior.

Positive Peer Reporting (PPR). Treatment involved a daily, structured interaction wherein students were awarded points for praising the behavior of the target student. The classroom teacher provided a rationale for PPR and taught the appropriate steps in providing compliments during a 20-minute training session conducted before the study began. Specifically, the class was told:

From now on, during group work, we will be focusing on peer relations. I will select a “star” at the beginning of the week. At the end of class, everyone will be given a chance to give a positive compliment to the star. Your compliment should describe something the student said or did any time during the day.

To ensure quality, the teacher described the steps in providing positive compliments and posted them on the bulletin board:

Steps for Providing Positive Compliments

1. Look at the person.

2. Smile.

3. Report something positive the person did or said during the day.

4. Say something like “good job” or “way to go.”

Examples of positive comments were provided and included “Mary raised her hand before speaking,” or “Kevin gave me a pencil to borrow.” Examples of poor comments were “Mary is nice,” or “Kevin did not get into trouble.”

For the treatment phase, data continued to be collected during cooperative learning activities. After these activities, each student took turns acknowledging the behavior of the participant (e.g., “Mick made an ‘A’ on his Language test. Good job, Mick.”). After receiving compliments, the participant was allowed an opportunity to praise other students. After this exchange, all students who provided appropriate positive compliments were immediately awarded points toward their privileges. The entire interaction lasted for approximately 5 to 7 minutes of class time.

Before the study, all students were allowed an opportunity to be the star for one week. After the study, a controlled evaluation of PPR was initiated, with the teacher announcing each new star on Monday morning. Fred was the star during the first week, Trish was the star during the second week and Mick was the star during the third and fourth weeks.

Procedural Integrity

Primary components were monitored during the brief PPR interactions, including the number of steps in each compliment, the number of peers who opted to provide compliments and whether points were awarded for positive compliments. Peer compliments generally included three to four steps, all peers who were presented provided compliments (with the exception of two occasions when a peer skipped an opportunity to praise Trish) and the teacher awarded points each day for compliments.

Design

A nonconcurrent multiple baseline (Hayes, 1981) was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. Baseline data for the participants were collected immediately before his or her turn and while another student was the star. Treatment data were collected during the week(s) each participant was nominated as the star. Results

Figure 1 displays the percentage of intervals during which cooperative statements toward peers were recorded across baseline and treatment conditions. Evaluation of Fred’s response to PPR, abbreviated because of absences, revealed a mean of 32% (range, 31-33%) during baseline which increased to a mean of 63.5% (range, 63-64%) during treatment. Trish exhibited highly variable rates of cooperative statements during baseline, ranging from 9% to 50% (M = 25%). During treatment, her rates increased to a mean of 48% (range, 46-50%). Mick’s mean cooperative statements during baseline were 20% (range, 10-38%). Mick’s treatment phase overlapped with a school holiday and the teacher therefore allowed 2 weeks of treatment during which time Mick’s cooperative statements increased gradually from 39% to 70% (M = 53.5%).

Analysis of sociometric ratings indicated that Fred’s peer status improved from a pretest median score of 4.5 to a post-test median score of 7.0. Mick’s sociometric ratings improved from a pretest median score of 2.0 to a post-test median of 4.0. Trish’s scores improved only slightly, from a pretest median of 0.5 to a post-test median of 1.0. Interestingly, these improvements correlated with each participant’s mean levels of positive statements during the treatment phase.

Social Validation. A randomly selected comparison student was observed during 11 of the cooperative peer activities. The mean percentage of cooperative statements emitted across this comparison group was 46% (range, 20-62%), indicating that the mean percentage across the three participants during treatment (M =54%) exceeded the average for nonrejected peers. The sum of the classroom teacher’s ratings on the IRP-15 was 86 (out of a possible 90), suggesting a high level of acceptability of the treatment procedures. FIGURE 1. The percentage of intervals with cooperative statements during cooperative learning activities for three participants across baseline (BL) and positive peer reporting experimental conditions. Discussion

The present results suggest one of the effects of PPR may be an increase in prosocial behaviors emitted by socially rejected students toward their peers. This is the fifth evaluation of the PPR procedure, but the first to document the emergence of specific prosocial behaviors in the target rejected children. As in other PPR research (Ervin et al., 1996), the social status of the rejected youth also increased. Collectively, these findings suggest a functional relationship between cooperation and quality of social relationships in rejected youth and underscore the importance of research to test this hypothesis further.

Additionally, our findings extend the social validity of PPR. The only extant study to assess treatment acceptability of PPR showed it was high (Ervin et al., 1998) but used anecdotal measures to do so. This study replicated the findings of Ervin et al. using a standardized acceptability instrument. We also included another important measure of social validity, validation of the outcome (Wolf, 1978). Specifically, the amount of cooperative behavior emitted by the rejected children during the intervention exceeded that of randomly- selected, nonrejected peers. Although these findings are positive, there are some limitations that may affect their interpretation. First, the teacher’s request to restrict treatment to one week (i.e., three sessions) seriously limited the number of data points for Fred and Trish. Fred’s baseline and treatment phases are especially difficult to interpret. Second, cooperation is a multidimensional construct (e.g., sharing responsibilities, turn taking) and this study measured only the occurrence or nonoccurrence of one dimension, cooperative statements, within each 15-second interval. Therefore, the effects of PPR on other dimensions of cooperation or instances of inappropriate behavior were not investigated. Third, neither the teacher nor any of the children were blind to study conditions and the observers were conspicuously present in the classroom during all observational periods. Thus, the reactivity of the methods is a potential source of variance in this study. Finally, we did not assess peer attention outside of the brief, structured PPR interactions and we do not know if PPR altered, rather than competed with, maintaining contingencies in the natural (i.e., cooperative learning) setting. Future work should address these issues while also extending the use of PPR with adolescents in less restrictive educational settings.

These limitations notwithstanding, this study supports the literature on PPR and, more generally, the literature on peer reinforcement. The potential influence of peer attention for the prosocial behavior was established early (Patterson & Anderson, 1964), but research in recent years has emphasized its role in the development and maintenance of disruptive or antisocial behavior (Chamberlain & Friman, 1997; Dishion et al., 1995; Northup et al., 1995, 1997; Patterson et al., 1992; Solomon & Wahler, 1973). Our understanding of this literature suggests that most of the contingencies governing their behavior involve either negative reinforcement or positive reinforcement for socially objectionable behavior. With relatively little cost (e.g., 5 – 7 minutes of verbal exchanges), PPR appears to have the potential to reverse, or at least retard, this trend and affect positive changes in treatment settings.