Ms. Karnes teaches eighth grade social studies. She knows her students well, knows their likes and dislikes, and knows their capabilities. Her students like to get her off on a tangent during a lesson, and they enjoy every opportunity to work together and talk. Ms. Karnes assigned a big project that involves group work and independent work. How might she use the Premack principle to encourage her

Question

eighth grade students to focus and complete their task efficiently?

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Suggested Response:
The Premack principle states that more-preferred activities can serve as reinforcers for less-preferred activities. This is also called grandma's rule: First do what I want you to do, then you may do what you want.
Ms. Karnes knows her students well. She can identify things they want to do. For example, they like to do group work more than independent work. Ms. Karnes might view this aspect of the project as the more-preferred activity and the independent work as the less-preferred activity. By getting students to complete a segment of the independent work before they work on an aspect of the group task, Ms. Karnes uses the Premack principle. For the strategy to succeed on such a big project, Ms. Karnes needs to set up the assignment as chunks of independent work and chunks of group work. Then she is able to use the Premack principle day by day rather than lumping all independent work at the beginning and all group work at the end.
Text Reference: Putting It All Together to Apply Operant Conditioning: Applied Behavior Analysis