A DESCRIPTIVE ASSESSMENT OF INSTRUCTION-BASED INTERACTIONS IN THE PRESCHOOL CLASSROOM VIRGINIA W. NDORO BEHAVIOR AND SOCIAL INTERVENTION CENTER AND GREGORY P. HANLEY,JEFFREY H. TIGER, AND NICOLE A. HEAL UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS The current study describes preschool teacher–child interactions during several commonly scheduled classroom activities in which teachers deliver instructions. An observation system was developed that incorporated measurement of evidence-based compliance strategies and included the types of instructions delivered (e.g., integral or deficient directives, embedded directives, ‘‘do’’ or ‘‘don’t’’ commands), the children’s behavior with respect to the instructions (e.g., compliance, noncompliance, active avoidance, problem behavior), and the differential responses of the teacher to the child’s behavior following an instruction (e.g., appropriate or inappropriate provision of attention and escape). After 4 classroom teachers were observed at least five times in each of five target activities, simple and conditional probabilities were calculated. Results indicated that (a) the frequency of instruction and probability of compliance varied as a function of activity type, (b) ‘‘do’’ commands and directive prompts were delivered almost to the exclusion of ‘‘don’t’’ commands and nondirective prompts, (c) the likelihood of compliance was highest following an embedded or an integral directive prompt, and (d) although putative social reinforcers were more likely to follow noncompliance than compliance and were highly likely following problem behavior, compliance occurred over twice as much as noncompliance, and problem behavior during instructions was very low. Implications for using descriptive assessments for understanding and improving teacher–child interactions in the preschool classroom are discussed. DESCRIPTORS: descriptive assessment, instructions, compliance, preschool children, teachers _______________________________________________________________________________ Research has shown that descriptive assess- ment can be an effective means for quantita- tively describing important interactions between people, which in turn, can be used to infer variables that influence behavior (Atwater & Morris, 1988; Bijou, Peterson, & Ault, 1968; Lerman & Iwata, 1993; Thompson & Iwata, 2001; Vollmer, Borrero, Wright, Van Camp, & Lalli, 2001). Once relations between an indi- vidual’s behavior and the social environment are specified, analyses can be designed to directly test putative relations, and interventions can then be developed to minimize problem behaviors, strengthen desirable behaviors, and improve the overall effectiveness of adult–child interactions (Iwata, Pace, Dorsey, et al., 1994; Lalli, Browder, Mace, & Brown, 1993). To that end, several recent descriptive studies sought to identify antecedent and consequent events associated with severe problem behaviors such as self-injury, aggression, and disruption that are often exhibited by children and adults with developmental disabilities (Thompson & Iwata; Vollmer et al.). Although descriptive assessments are often conducted to infer variables for problem behavior or to individualize subsequent func- tional analyses of problem behavior, descriptive assessments also may be conducted simply to better understand how antecedent and conse- quences interact with important behaviors in We thank Karen Benzel for her assistance with data analysis. Requests for reprints should be addressed to Gregory P. Hanley, Applied Behavioral Science Department, 1000 Sunnyside Avenue, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66045 (e-mail: ghanley@ku.edu). doi: 10.1901/jaba.2006.146-04 JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS 2006, 39, 79–90 NUMBER 1(SPRING 2006) 79