Association for Behavior Analysis International

Team organization is an integral part of many scholarly and work related tasks. Typically it`s dependent upon un-controlled, un-known or random factors. These series of studies presented here take a different approach to team organization and management: The direct identification of member specific competence and its contribution to the fulfilment of team goals. The concept of competence primacy is used to describe the prevalence, persistence or priority of a certain type of competence which each team member brings to the table in the solution of team based tasks. First, results that pin-point the primary competence of different university students are presented with in a five level model. Secondly, a general methodology for the construction and application of team based virtual tasks (such as, matching to sample, nonsense syllables and path completion) is presented given that each task is designed in terms a five level model of goal complexity. Finally, initial results are presented which describe the general success or failure to meet team objectives under three general conditions of correspondence between competence primacy and team goal complexity: a) total correspondence, b) partial correspondence and c) non correspondence. General conclusions point to the possibility of a behavioral driven methodology for the organization of efficient work or scholarly teams.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of individual and group feedback on work performance (both quantity and quality), feedback acceptance and group cohesiveness. Ninety participants were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: individual feedback, group feedback, and no feedback condition. Participants had to perform a conjunctive work task that required them work cooperatively in a group of three. The experimental sessions consisted of one 20 min baseline session and five 20 min treatment sessions. That is, 3 x 2 mixed design was adopted. The results showed that the group feedback was more effective than the individual feedback in improving the quantity of work performance although the two types of feedback did not produce a difference in the quality of performance. In addition, the group feedback produced higher level of group cohesiveness. However, the individual feedback produced higher level of feedback acceptance. These findings suggest that individual feedback is not always superior to group feedback and the relative effectiveness may depend on the types of work task.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of social interaction and group size on work performance under an equally distributed group incentive system. Participants were 120 undergraduate students and randomly assigned to one of four experimental groups: (1) 3-member group with social interaction, (2) 10-member group with social interaction, (3) 3-member group without social interaction, and (4) 10-member group without social interaction. A simulated work task which resembled online banking money transfer was developed and participants were asked to perform the work task. The dependent variable was the number of correctly completed work tasks. All participants performed six 15 minute sessions. For the participants who had social interaction opportunities, the different group size did not produce a significant difference in performance. For those who did not have social interaction opportunities, on the other hand, the performance of 3-member group was significantly higher than that of the 10-member group.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of self-monitoring accuracy on safe sitting posture. Participants in this study were sixty undergraduate students. During 30 min baseline phase, participants were asked to perform typing task and their safe sitting posture scores were obtained. Based on the scores, participants were divided into two groups through the matching procedure so that the mean scores of the two groups could be approximately equivalent. In one group, participants received self-monitoring training with accuracy training. In the other, participants received self-monitoring training without accuracy training. After the training, the self-monitoring phase started. This phase lasted for 60 min and participants were asked to self-monitor their own sitting postures and their sitting posture scores were obtained. The results indicated that safe posture scores in both group were significantly higher in the self-monitoring phase compared to the baseline. More importantly, safe posture scores of the group with accuracy training were significantly higher than those of the group without accuracy training.

Providing feedback is a critical component of supervision. One commonly recommended feedback procedure is the feedback sandwich (FBS; Henley & DiGennaro Reed, 2015). The purpose of this research was to examine the degree to which supervisors delivery of FBS continues post-training with high levels of fidelity over the course of three months. Videotaped feedback sessions following FBS training of 16 supervisors were coded to assess procedural fidelity. Data show that the average percent of correct implementation across sessions range from 75-100%, and that the average duration of a feedback sandwich across sessions ranged from 44-58 seconds. These results suggest that with relatively brief training that introduces the concept of the feedback sandwich, supervisors maintain acceptable levels of fidelity in use of FBS over time. Importantly, these results occurred in the absence of feedback to the supervisor regarding the implementation of FBS, suggesting that this method is easy to learn and implement. Implications for training and future research on types of performance feedback will be presented.