Changing What Teachers Say Changes What They Do: Increasing Their Specific Praise of Student Behavior

By differentially reinforcing questionnaire statements that favored teachers’ behavior-specific praise in a multiple-baseline design across participants, we altered the verbal behavior of general education teachers. Our target was a written verbalization favoring the delivery of specific rather than general praise. We then assessed the effects on their spoken interactions with their students. The teachers’ specific praise of student behavior increased while reprimands decreased or remained stable. These effects continued after the differential reinforcement procedure was discontinued. The differential reinforcement of verbal behavior is an alternative strategy for adding desired behavior to the repertoires of teachers; it may be more effective than giving instructions about the behavior or directly targeting the behavior itself with differential reinforcement.