Increasing the Complaince of Preschoolers

Good News For Parents: Psychologist Increases Preschooler Compliance in Study
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/52957.php

This study, which was conducted in 2006, checked into seeing on how to raise the compliance of preschoolers. They did this by following a three step system that is not very well known. They did this study for different preschool kids for twice-a-week sessions for about a six month period. The three step system went like this. First off, the instructor gave out a direct request like "Put the toy away" to the kid. If the kid carried out the action to the request, then he or she would get praise from the instructor. But if the kid didn't do it, then the instuctor would make direct eye contact with the kid and would say the kid's name. The instructor then would tell the kid their same request and show him or her about what they wanted accomplished. If the kid carried out the action to the request the second time, he or she would still get praise from the instructor. But if once again the kid didn't carry out the action from the request in about 10 seconds, the instructor would say the request again as well as leading the kid towards carrying out the action. The conductors also looked at consistency in this study in which they used three different levels. The first level was 100% consistency in which the instructor completely followed the three step system of raising compliance, while the second level was 50% consistency in which the instructors followed the three step model for only 50% of the time. But for the third level, it was 0% consistency in which the instructors didn't carry out the three step system. What they found was that compliance raised the most when the instructors completely carried out the three step system and that there was really no progress in raising compliance when the instructors carried out the three step system at 0% consistency. Even though, I do admit that these results aren't really surprising. I really liked the statement by the main conductor of this study in which it is better for parents not to give off any negative emotions especially in the later steps of this system when parents are following this three step method to raise their kids' compliance . I definitely know that most kids will most likely carry out a action from request if the parents act positive towards them. If the parent raises their voice, the kid might lash back at them or show another negative emotion like crying. This might lead the kid to not carry out the task at that moment.

Even though, I do wonder if the factors of compliance that we learned about in class had or might have an effect in this study. I question that with the kids that complied on the first try, that they might have been in better moods compared to the kids that complied on later tries. The reason that the kids might have not complied the first time could have based on them getting mad about something else from earlier in the day and ended up keeping that same bad mood for most of the day. I also wonder if the instructors would have given reasons to their requests to the kids the first time. This might have improved these kids' compliance.

I also wonder about how many parents ended up using this three step system to help with their kids' compliance. Obviously with this method not being well-known, the number isn't probably really high. When the parents decided to use this three step system, I was also curious about how consistent these parents followed the three step system. This is especially important, because consistency was a big time factor in this study to help to bring up the kids' complaince.