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TRAINING PUBLIC‐SPEAKING BEHAVIOR: AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS AND SOCIAL VALIDATION 1
Author(s) -
Fawcett Stephen B.,
Miller L. Keith
Publication year - 1975
Publication title -
journal of applied behavior analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.1
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1938-3703
pISSN - 0021-8855
DOI - 10.1901/jaba.1975.8-125
Subject(s) - psychology , public speaking , medical education , gesture , public service , applied psychology , social psychology , public relations , medicine , computer science , philosophy , linguistics , political science , computer vision
The effect of an instructional package on public‐speaking behaviors was analyzed in two experiments. The instructional package was designed to teach public‐speaking trainees to look at the audience, make gestures, and perform a number of speaking behaviors. The results of Experiment I, with a university student serving as the trainee, showed that the percentage of each category of public‐speaking target behavior increased only after the instructional package was introduced for that category. The results of Experiment 2, with three low‐income paraprofessional staff members of a neighborhood service center serving as trainees, showed that the percentage of target behaviors increased after the instructional package was introduced for the respective trainee. Audience ratings of public‐speaking performance were correlated with direct observations of target responses. All trainees showed marked improvements in audience ratings from pretraining to posttraining. This study demonstrated an effective procedure for training public‐speaking behaviors.