These students were the second age group to be tested. This meant that there was still a bit of confusion when it came to organization of the trials. The teacher that the lab was confirmed with was not present the day of the actual testing so the rules and procedure had to be re-explained to the teachers, and along with the fluster from the pure numbers of students that would be spoken to, this led to a difficulty in keeping groups separated correctly. The teachers tried to take charge of the organization as they could see there was little order. However, this only made things worse. The fifth graders were put into two separate rooms. They were both packed, loud, and impatient. There was poor communication so no one knew which test to administer. Both had already given instructions, but had a brief meeting in the hall before starting where the mistake was realized. Even after getting this sorted out, there was still no control group as there were only two testing groups that both tested at the same time. This means that the fifth grade results can only be taken as a reference as the directions to half of the kids were unclear when they changed and there was no control …show more content…
The two teachers in the rooms during the test were very strict and even their presence was threatening to the students. When a student verbally expressed her shock to the task, she was yelled at and sent out of the room by a teacher. The students were tense, and were afraid about how their teachers would react if they were unable to complete the task or did anything wrong. This added extra reinforcement to the positive and negative groups that other groups were not given. The results of this lab can be used to help teachers and those who work with groups of children how to use reinforcement tactics to properly encourage their students. All teachers interact with their students differently, some teachers encourage using positive stimulus such as a reward for doing well, while others go the opposite route and punishing for bad performance. Those who are on the fence about how they will use reinforcement in children can use this data as a guide to picking the most well received reinforcement