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Effects of interspersing rates on students performance on and preferences for mathematics assignments: Testing the discrete task completion hypothesis
Author(s) -
Cates Gary L.,
Erkfritz Karyn N.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
psychology in the schools
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.738
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1520-6807
pISSN - 0033-3085
DOI - 10.1002/pits.20251
Subject(s) - task (project management) , mathematics education , psychology , control (management) , mathematics , computer science , artificial intelligence , engineering , systems engineering
Abstract The current study investigated the discreet task completion hypothesis presented by C. H. Skinner (2002) by investigating how the rate of interspersing affects performance on and preferences for academic assignments. Specifically, 70 sixth‐, seventh‐, and eighth‐grade students were presented with four assignment pairs of multiplication problems. Each pair consisted of a control assignment (i.e., no interspersing) and an experimental assignment (i.e., interspersing) that interspersed at one of four rates (i.e., no interspersing, every other problem, every third problem, or every fifth problem). After working on each assignment pair, assignment acceptability was measured. Results indicated that although students completed the same number of target problems with the same level of accuracy within assignment pairs, total problem completion rates were affected by the rate of interspersing. In addition, students' acceptability of the assignments was strongly related to the discrepancy in total problems completed across assignment types within assignment pairs. Discussion focuses on predicting students' preferences for academic assignments, implications for practitioners, and directions for future research. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.