This research evaluated several antecedent stimulus conditions for facilitating client conversation during a noon-time family style dining program at a state retardation facility. Experiment one compared a condition using a staff member as the table leader to a condition with the clients serving as table leader, within a multi-element design. Results indicated that more client conversation resulted on both tables under the client-as-table-leader condition. Experiment two evaluated whether the passing and serving of food by the clients themselves produced more subsequent conversation than during meals when they received pre-served plates. Again, a multi-element design was utilized. Here, ambiguous results were obtained: one table evidenced no differences, while the second table engaged in a higher rate of conversation after passing and serving their own food. Experiment three investigated the effectiveness of a designated topic for producing conversational rates beyond that obtained under the optimum conditions discovered in experiments one and two. Within a multiple-baseline design, the results obtained suggest that providing a designated topic increases conversation over that found under the baseline conditions (Client table leader plus pass-and-serve food service). However, the conversational levels obtained in experiment three did not equal the level of conversation found among similarly sized groups of staff members at lunchtime. The potential cost-effectiveness of these antecedent manipulations argues in favor of their use for increasing client interactions as opposed to more costly contingency management systems. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-10, Section: B, page: 4194. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74668 |
| Contributors | HUTCHISON, JOHN MICHAEL., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 86 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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