A first-grade behavior contract indicates that a student will earn a check mark for appropriate social interactions and, after ten check marks, will receive fifteen minutes of free time. What behavior management concept is this an example of?

• A. Shaping technique
• B. Self-managing skills
• C. Reinforcement schedule
• D. Chaining method

Answer: (C)

Reinforcement schedules describe when rewards are given after a behavior, and this example uses a fixed-ratio approach. The student earns a check mark for each appropriate social interaction, and after accumulating ten checks, a larger reward—fifteen minutes of free time—is delivered. Because the reinforcement is provided after a set number of responses, it fits a fixed-ratio schedule. The check marks can function like tokens in a token economy, but the core idea is the predictable, ratio-based delivery of reinforcement.

Shaping would involve reinforcing successive approximations toward a new target behavior, not simply delivering a reward after a specified count of interactions. Self-managing skills refer to the student taking control of monitoring and reinforcing their own behavior, which isn’t stated here as the student managing the reinforcement themselves. Chaining involves linking a sequence of behaviors to form a single complex action, which is not what’s happening in this scenario.