Teachers’ Contingent Responses to Children’s Mands in Preschool Classrooms

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to use a direct behavioral observation coding system to quantify and categorize children’s mands and teachers’ contingent responses in three types of typically occurring preschool classroom activities. Children’s mands were categorized based on their presumed function, and teachers’ responses were coded based on whether the response did or did not match the presumed function of the preceding mand. Authors conducted a descriptive analysis to describe how often and for what children emitted mands and how teachers responded within and across activities. Results showed that, on average, across all activities, the proportion of child mands to which teachers responded was 0.82. The proportion of teacher responses that matched the presumed function of the preceding child mand was 0.55. Teacher responses matched the presumed function of attention mands most often, while teachers’ responses often did not match the presumed function of tangible and escape mands. Results can help practitioners and researchers understand more about how often, when, and why children mand and for whom mand development is or is not being supported by teachers in preschool classrooms. These data also offer insight into how natural reinforcement schedules can be integrated into mand training interventions.

Keywords

verbal behavior mands contingent responding preschool functions of behavior

This study helps practitioners and researchers by examining potential natural schedules of reinforcement operating on children’s mands in preschool environments

Understanding how often and for what children mand and how teachers are contingently responding allows practitioners and researchers plan for class-wide interventions to help support mand development for all young children

This study can also help researchers and practitioners when developing individualized interventions for children who need additional support to develop or enhance their mand repertoires

The coding system used in this study can support practitioners to understand how their contingent responses to preschoolers’ mand behaviors can support appropriate mand development and potentially lessen challenging behavior

Early childhood classrooms are learning communities that include young children with diverse characteristics, experiences, and learning support needs. Children’s characteristics and experiences affect their communicative interactions with adults and peers. Communicating one’s wants and needs is an essential and foundational skill for all young children. Delays in learning this foundational skill can have both short- and long-term negative consequences, particularly for children with or at risk for disabilities (Kelley et al., 2007). Effectively communicating wants and needs promotes positive communicative interactions and can prevent the emergence of challenging behavior or the need for interventions to reduce them (McCammon et al., 2024). Early childhood teachers can face challenges in supporting children to learn this foundational skill when children in their classrooms have diverse communication capabilities.

Using evidence-based practices that support all young children to learn foundational communication and language skills is important. Multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) emphasize universal promotion and prevention, differentiated, and individualized practices (Shepley & Grisham-Brown, 2019) to support learning. Universal supports include the use of interaction and instructional practices that will be beneficial for all children. The Division for Early Childhood (DEC, 2014) Recommended Practices include several interaction and instructional practices that have been shown to promote positive communication and language learning for all children, including children with or at risk for disabilities, children from culturally or linguistically diverse backgrounds, and children who have experienced trauma. One of these recommended practices is contingent responding.

Contingent responding, or responses to children’s behaviors that are immediate and meaningful (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2014), facilitate many aspects of their communication and language development. The DEC (2014) Recommended Practices emphasize the importance of adults’ contingent responses to children’s emotional expressions, play, social activity, and verbal and nonverbal communication. Research has demonstrated that insufficient contingent responding can hinder young children’s communication and language learning, which can lead to challenging behavior (e.g., Chow & Wehby, 2018; Curtis et al., 2019).

Communication to Express Preferences and Needs

Children’s earliest intentional communication skills include using eye gaze and gestures to obtain adult attention to meet needs or engage in brief social interactions (Crais & Ogletree, 2016). In addition, early verbal behaviors can be repeating sounds or words that an adult says, which are called echoics. The earliest words children use are often items or people they need or want, or what has been referred to as mands (McCammon et al., 2024). Mands are communicative behaviors (i.e., verbal operants) evoked by establishing operations and maintained by specific reinforcement (Skinner, 1957). Establishing operations are environmental variables that temporarily increase the effectiveness of a reinforcer at promoting behavior and the frequency of behaviors (e.g., mands) leading to that reinforcer. Specific reinforcers directly relate to the focus of the child’s mand. For example, when a child asks or mands to the teacher, “Will you read with me?” the specific reinforcer is the teacher reading with the child. The establishing operation for the mand might be the child’s lack of access to the teacher’s attention or the child’s desire to read a book. The “increase in frequency” refers to children’s active use of behaviors (“Will you read with me?”) that have previously led to that reinforcer (the teacher reading a book with them). A child would not use the mand “Can I have a pretzel?” to have the teacher read with them because that phrase (i.e., behavior) had not been previously reinforced by the teacher reading with the child.

Mands comprise a large portion of young children’s early communication repertoires because they most directly benefit the child (LaFrance & Miguel, 2014; Michael, 1988). Benefit means when a child accesses the specific reinforcer named in the mand, the child gets what they have requested. The direct correspondence among an establishing operation, mand behavior, and its reinforcer helps young children quickly and efficiently understand and learn the relationships between their communicative behavior and the desired outcome (i.e., access to the reinforcement; e.g., Lamarre & Holland, 1985; Sundberg & Michael, 2001).

Functions of Verbal Behavior and Pragmatic Language Functions

Michael (1988) described the importance of connecting mands to their establishing operations (EOs) to understand “why a mand occurs on a particular occasion” (p. 6) or the function of that mand. The two functions of behaviors are positive reinforcement (i.e., to access preferred stimuli) and negative reinforcement (i.e., to avoid or remove aversive stimuli). Researchers have shown through the use of functional analyses (FA; cf. Iwata et al., 1994; Vollmer et al., 1995), which are systematic manipulations of establishing operations and specific reinforcers in controlled environments, that these two functions can be parsed out into three: (a) access to peer or adult attention, (b) access to tangibles, and (c) escape from aversive stimuli. Several studies have examined these functions as they relate to mand behaviors (Pennington et al., 2015; Schieltz et al., 2010). When examining these relationships in natural settings, it is difficult to determine the function of a mand. Adults can rely on what children say and do to presume the function of a mand and respond contingently with what the adult believes to be the specific reinforcer, if appropriate, to support mand development.

Beyond the functions of verbal behavior described above, language researchers have described pragmatic communicative functions. Pragmatics focuses on how children use language across different interpersonal or social contexts (Ninio & Snow, 2018). Several classification frameworks and taxonomies focused on pragmatic functions have been described (e.g., Coggins & Carpenter, 1981; Dore, 1975; Drew et al., 2007; Prizant & Wetherby, 1987). Common pragmatic functions across these frameworks include commenting, requesting, greeting, and protesting, although the operational definitions sometimes differ across these frameworks. Mand behaviors align most closely with the pragmatic functions of requesting, showing, greeting, and protesting.

When children request, they access attention (e.g., information, assistance) or materials (e.g., objects). These requests can be classified as mands emitted for attention or tangibles if the specified reinforcers are animate (e.g., mands for action, information, permission) or inanimate, respectively. Mands emitted for escape or avoidance are equivalent to the pragmatic functions of protest or rejection. For example, a child might say, “I don’t want to go to blocks,” which would be a protest mand for escape. An example of a rejection mand for escape would be a child saying, “I don’t want that,” after being offered a toy or saying, “No thank you,” if a teacher offers to play with them. Research on mand training supports these pragmatic distinctions. Researchers have taught children to use mands for information leading to both attention (e.g., information about another person; Gordon & Shillingsburg, 2019; Valentino et al., 2019) and tangibles (e.g., information leading to preferred items; Landa et al., 2017; Shillingsburg et al., 2013). Researchers have also taught mands for escape by teaching different phrases to protest or reject (e.g., Groskreutz et al., 2014; Yi et al., 2006). Researchers and practitioners from various disciplines can expand their knowledge and understanding of what children mand for and how to respond to those mands to support appropriate mand development by utilizing pragmatic functions of behavior in conjunction with behavioral functions.

Setting Factors Affecting Mand Behaviors

Several researchers have described the importance of environmental context and arrangements when studying behavior, such as mand learning and development (e.g., Fox & Conroy, 1995; McCammon et al., 2024). The physical, temporal, and social features of preschool classrooms likely influence the establishing operations and reinforcers available, thus serving as setting factors for children’s mands (Fox, 1990) and teachers’ responses to children’s mands. Setting factors in a preschool environment might include the presence or absence of certain materials or people, the behavioral expectations of an activity, or interactions with other children or teachers.

A mand behavior is strengthened each time it contacts reinforcement, with the frequency of mand-reinforcer interactions and the latency between the mand and reinforcer being critical to mand acquisition and maintenance (Bijou, 1993). Before using differentiated or individualized practices to support young children’s mand development, it is critical to understand what universal practices teachers use and what select setting factors might affect teachers’ responses to children’s mand behaviors.

Studies of Teachers’ Responses to Children’s Communication Behaviors

Descriptive analysis is a method in which researchers directly observe behaviors in natural or uncontrolled settings (Pelligrini et al., 2013). Only a few descriptive studies have been conducted in natural settings to examine how teachers contingently respond to children’s communication within and across different activities in preschool classrooms (e.g., Keen et al., 2005; Rhyner et al., 1990, 2012). These studies did not use observation and measurement approaches that allow for analysis of the potential reinforcing or punishing effects of teachers’ responses to children’s mand behaviors. Data showing how often and why children mand and how teachers typically respond to those mands can help inform universal, differentiated, and individualized practices for children with or without disabilities who might need additional support for developing or increasing their mand repertoires.

Keen et al. (2005), Rhyner et al. (1990, 2012) have examined how teachers responded to children’s communication behaviors in preschool classrooms. In all three studies, the researchers used descriptive analysis methodology and direct behavior observation systems (DBOS) to measure children’s communication behaviors and teachers’ responses in typically occurring activities. None of the studies used a verbal behavior framework to guide their observations and descriptive analyses. In their study, Keen et al. (2005) used a pragmatic function framework to characterize the function of children’s communication.

Rhyner (1990, 2012) collected data on teachers’ contingent responses to children’s communication behaviors for 15 minutes in structured, semi-structured, and unstructured activities. Both studies defined a communicative attempt as “a vocalization/verbalization, gesture, or combination that was intended to obtain and/or direct the child caregivers’ focus of attention” (Rhyner et al., 2012, p. 236). Teacher responses were recorded using timed-event recording and the following coding categories: (a) no response (appropriate to the context), (b) no response (inappropriate to the context), (c) noncontingent response (appropriate to the context), (d) noncontingent response (inappropriate to the context) (e) contingent response and termination of the interaction (appropriate to the context), (f) contingent response and termination of the interaction (inappropriate to the context), and (g) contingent response leading to maintenance of the communicative interaction. For a response to be considered contingent, it had to relate to the preceding communicative attempt directly. An example of a contingent response would have been if a child verbalized “house,” and the teacher said, “Yes, you made a house.” A noncontingent response to the child saying “house” would be a teacher redirection to another toy. Rhyner et al. found that the proportion of children’s communication behaviors to which teachers contingently responded varied across activity types. Teachers contingently responded most often during unstructured activities and responded least often during structured activities.

Keen et al. (2005) collected 90 minutes of data per teacher-child dyad across three typically occurring activities: snack, whole group, and music. In this study, researchers noted, “a communicative act began when the child initiated interaction with the adult or an object and was terminated when the child’s attentional focus shifted or a turn was exchanged” (Wetherby & Prutting, 1984 as cited by Keen et al., 2005, p. 24). Keen and colleagues (2005) categorized each communicative act into one of the nine pragmatic functions: requesting object, requesting action, attention to self, comments, social convention, reject/protest, responses, requesting information, and imitation. Researchers then recorded the teacher’s response into one of the three categories: (a) acknowledgment (i.e., a clear spoken statement from the teacher indicating she had observed the child’s communication act), (b) reaction (i.e., the teacher interacted with the child in some other unspoken way indicating the teacher saw the child’s behavior) or (c) no response (i.e., did not acknowledge or react to child’s communication behavior). On average, teachers engaged in reactions and no responses most often. However, the types of teacher responses varied according to the pragmatic function of the child’s behavior. For example, protest/reject communicative acts were more likely to receive a no response than social conventions, which were most likely to receive acknowledgment.

The methods and procedures used in these studies provide insightful information on measuring teachers’ contingent responses to children’s communication behaviors in early learning settings. Nevertheless, given the operational definitions used for child communication behaviors and teacher responses, no inferences can be drawn about the potential reinforcing effects of teacher responses. To date, no studies have used a functions of verbal behavior approach to describe how teachers respond to children’s mand behaviors. Using this approach will help researchers and practitioners better understand how teachers support young children’s appropriate mand development by exploring natural contingencies operating on mands in preschool classrooms. The approach will also provide descriptive information about universal and recommended contingent response practices being used to support all young children’s communication development in early learning settings.

Purpose and Research Questions

The purpose of the present natural setting observational study was to conduct a descriptive analysis using a count-coding direct behavioral observation system (DBOS) to quantify teachers’ responses to children’s mands in preschool classrooms. We examined teachers’ contingent responses to children’s mands within and across three types of preschool classroom activities: child-initiated, meals, and small group teacher-directed activities. These activities were selected given that they are common in preschool classrooms where mand behavior would be expected to occur. They represented unstructured (child-initiated), semi-structured (meals), and structured (small-group teacher-directed) activities like those used in previous research. Four research questions were addressed:

Research Question 1 (RQ1): To what proportion of children’s mands do teachers respond?

Research Question 2 (RQ2): What proportion of teacher responses to children’s mands match the presumed social-communication function?

Research Question 3 (RQ3): Do teachers’ proportions of matched responses vary by mand type (i.e., attention-simple, attention-complex, tangible, and escape)?

Research Question 4 (RQ4): Do teachers’ proportions of matched responses vary by activity type (i.e., child-initiated, meals, and teacher-directed small group)?

Method

Video Inclusion Criteria

Video observations from a cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) funded by the Institute of Education Sciences were used with permission in the present study. The RCT focused on efficacious professional development approaches for supporting preschool teachers in embedding instructional learning opportunities for children with or at risk for disabilities in typically occurring classroom activities and routines. The RCT was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the primary research site, which was also the IRB of record for the current study. Informed consent for the RCT was obtained from lead teachers and parents of children enrolled in these teachers’ classrooms. As part of informed consent, teachers agreed to video data collection of their interactions with children during classroom activities and routines. A separate IRB was submitted and approved to use data from the primary site (i.e., deidentified classroom videos and select teacher and classroom data) for the secondary descriptive analyses conducted in the present study. No deidentified data about individual children with disabilities who participated in the RCT were used in the present study.

Classroom videos used in the present study had to meet the following criteria: (a) collected at the primary research site, (b) conducted during the preintervention phase of the RCT study, (c) classrooms were inclusive (i.e., included children with and without disabilities), and (d) videos for each classroom included at least one child-initiated activity, meal, and teacher-directed small group activity so teachers’ responses could be compared across activity types. If videos included more than one of a specific activity type, all videos for that activity type were included. Only pre-intervention videos were included to capture “natural” interactions and avoid any incidental influence the intervention that was part of the RCT might have had on children’s naturally occurring mand rates and functions or teachers’ responses to children’s mands.

Participants and Settings

Adult participants in the videos used in the present study were 16 lead teachers from inclusive preschool classrooms in a large southern state’s North-Eastern, North-Central, or Mid-Central regions. All teachers were female, and nearly all (88%) identified as Caucasian. Teachers averaged 8 years (SD = 6 years) of experience in early childhood classrooms. Most teachers (88%) held a general education teaching certificate, and eight held special education teacher certificates. Child participants were preschool children between 3 and 5 years of age. The average number of children per classroom was 13.6 (R = 8–20). An average of 40% (R = 13%–82%) of children in the classrooms had individualized education programs (IEPs).

Definitions for the three types of activities were the same as in the RCT study. Child-initiated (CI) activities were defined as activities in which children could direct their engagement and were offered frequent opportunities to choose what and with whom they were playing. These activities typically included free play or centers and activities where children read books individually on the carpet if they could select their books. Meals included breakfast, lunch, and snacks if they occurred within the classroom. Children typically had individual meals either brought from home or provided by the school, although one classroom had “family-style” meals. Teacher-direct small-group (TDS) were structured activities led by the teacher in which less than 50% of all children participated, and there were fewer opportunities for child choice and expression. Most TDS groups focused on pre-academic skills. Examples were engaging in scripted literacy lessons, completing worksheets focused on the letter of the week, using counting bears to sort or count, or practicing letter-sound identification and other phonics lessons. The average duration of videos used in the present study was 29.3, 19.5, and 27.5 minutes for CI, meals, and TDS, respectively.

Experimental Design

A nominal descriptive analysis design was used to describe the number and type of child mands and the proportion of teacher responses within each mand function category. Descriptive analyses are direct observations of behaviors in natural or uncontrolled conditions (Pelligrini et al., 2013). Nominal refers to categorizing the coding variables from the DBOS without ranking the categories in order or preference. The purpose was to describe patterns in behavior and not rank or judge the correctness or quality of teachers’ responses to children’s mands.

Dependent Measure and Videotape Analysis Procedures

The dependent measure used in the present study was the Teacher Responsivity Observational Coding System-Revised (TROCS-R; Germansky & Snyder, 2022), which was a coding system developed by the first and second authors to (a) quantify the number of child mand occurrences, (b) categorize mand occurrences by their presumed function, (c) quantify teachers’ contingent responses to children’s mands, and (d) categorize teachers’ responses by judging whether they did or did not match the presumed function of the preceding mand. Child mands were defined as

A socially appropriate, conventional gesture, spoken communicative bid, or unprompted use of an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device directed to the teacher [lead teacher in the RCT] or to a group of people that includes the teacher and has the presumed function of manding for attention, tangibles, or escape. (Authors, p. 3)

Coders had to identify the mand was directed at the teacher (i.e., by the child saying the teacher’s name, looking directly at the teacher) or the mand was not directed at another child (i.e., the child said a peer’s name, looking directly at another child). If children were in a small group that included the teacher and emitted a mand to the entire group, this mand was considered to be directed at the teacher and was coded.

The four function categories of child mands were labeled as a) attention-simple, b) attention-complex, c) tangible, and d) escape. Attention-simple included mands for the teacher to direct their attention toward the child or another object or person. Attention-complex was defined as child mands focused on gaining the teachers’ attention for specific information or for the teacher to perform a requested action. Tangible included mands to obtain an inanimate object or mands to interact with someone other than the lead teacher. Mands to interact with others were included under tangible because only mands directed to the lead teacher were coded as attention. Mands for escape included those with the function of avoiding or rejecting attention, objects, or activities. Additional guidance was provided about coding individual mand types to help coders identify mands and not other types of communication (i.e., verbal operants). For example, a comment from a child that initiated an interaction with a teacher but was only a description of what the child was doing was not coded (e.g., a child looking at the teacher and saying, “I have a bell!”). Because the child described an event in the environment, this communicative behavior would not have been counted as a mand. Table 1 shows the four mand categories. Definitions for each mand category are shown in Table 1, along with examples of child mands that occurred and examples of teacher responses.

Table 1.

Mand Categories, Definitions, and Examples From the TROCS Coding Manual.

Child mand category	Mand definition	Mand example	Teacher response-match example	Teacher response-no match example
Attention-Simple	A child mand with the presumed function of directing the adult’s attention toward themselves or another object, event, or person.	Child says to the teacher, “Excuse me”	Teacher replies, “What’s up?”	Teacher holds up a finger to signal “wait”
Attention-Complex	A child mand with the presumed function of obtaining the adult’s attention to gain information or to have the adult perform a specified action.	Child asks the teacher, “Can you build a tower with me? Child asks, “when is lunch?”	The teacher begins working on the tower with the child The teacher says, “in 20 mins”	“Not right now” The teacher says, “go check the schedule”
Tangible	A child mand with the presumed function of gaining or retaining access to an inanimate object/activity or asking permission to go to somewhere or for the child to do something. Mands to interact or play with another person (e.g., another teacher or peer) are considered mands for tangible.	“Can I play with Tom?” “Can I have a pretzel”	The teacher says, “sure!” The teacher gives the child a pretzel	The teacher says, “go ask him” The teacher gives the child a cookie
Escape	A child mand with the presumed function of avoiding, removing, ending, or rejecting undesired attention, objects, actions, or activities.	Child says, “Stop!” while teacher is providing a physical prompt during a task	The teacher removes their hands to stop providing the physical prompt	The teacher continues providing the physical prompt

Teacher response categories included response-match, response-no match, and no response. Response-match was defined as the teacher responding within 3 seconds to the child’s mand, and the response gave the child access to or removed the specified reinforcer in the preceding mand. Response-no match occurred when the teacher responded, but the response did not provide access to or remove the presumed reinforcer preceding child mand. A no response was coded if the teacher did not respond to the child’s mand within 3 s. The decision to use a 3-second response window was based on previous literature that showed delayed reinforcement of 6 to 7 seconds by the social partner to a child’s mand behavior might result in the child emitting other, more problematic communicative behaviors (e.g., Drasgow et al., 2016). We assumed a 3-second window would provide enough time for a teacher to respond to a child’s mand before the child engaged in other behaviors. The complete TROCS-R coding manual is available from the first author on request.

Each observation was coded using the Observer XT® 12.5 software (Noldus Information Technology, 2020) to enable timed-event recording. Coders imported activity videos and used stop-and-go coding (Yoder et al., 2018) to pause and replay the video when needed. Because coders could stop and rewatch the video, they could code mands that occurred simultaneously from different children. Coders watched for child mand occurrences and recorded each occurrence of a mand emitted by any child on the screen. After a mand occurrence was recorded, coders assigned one mand function category to the occurrence and recorded the corresponding teacher response category. Although we recognized that child mands could serve multiple functions (e.g., attention-simple and tangible; Melanson & Fahmie, 2023), only one presumed function category was coded based on what the child said or did.

Several coding decision rules were used to assist coders in categorizing mands into one category. If a mand included an attention-simple mand along with another mand type, the entire communicative behavior was coded as the other mand type. For example, if a child said, “Mr. Tyler (attention-simple), cookie please (tangible)?” the entire mand was coded as a mand for tangible. If a mand included two or more different mand types that were not attention-simple with fewer than 3 seconds between each mand, the entire string would be coded as the final mand in the string. For example, if a child said, “I want to go to blocks (tangible), will you play with me there? (attention-complex)” the entire communicative behavior would be coded as an attention-complex. If there were more than 3 seconds between each communicative mand behavior, the mands were coded as separate occurrences.

Interobserver Agreement and Training

The third author served as the secondary coder for this study. The third author was a doctoral student in special education and early childhood studies at the time of the study. They were trained by the first author using methods described by Yoder et al. (2018). The second author used a training session checklist to score the fidelity of the training. The training was conducted across three sessions totaling 5 hours. During the first two sessions, the first author introduced the purpose of the study and the verbal behavior framework in which the coding system was grounded. The coding manual was reviewed, including the definitions for every coding category, examples and nonexamples of each mand function and teacher responses, and coding decision rules. Each time a definition was introduced, video examples of children exhibiting that mand type and teacher responses to those mands were shown. The coders then discussed how the interactions would be coded according to the definitions and coding guidance provided in the manual. After the second training session, the secondary coder was assigned a practice video, which was reviewed during the third session. Following training, the secondary coder applied the codes and decision rules to additional practice videos, after which their codes were compared with the first author’s codes. Before coding the study footage, the secondary coder had to reach at least 80% agreement on the occurrences and all coding categories for two videos, which was achieved within three sessions. Fidelity data were collected by the second author during all three training sessions and was 100% for each session.

Interobserver agreement (IOA) was calculated for 37.5% (n = 6 classrooms) of the 16 classroom videos used in the present study. Classroom videos were randomly selected using a number generator, and each activity type in that classroom was coded. This decision was made because every classroom video used in the present study had all three types of activities, and the descriptive data were aggregated within and across classrooms and subsequently disaggregated by activity type within and across classrooms. For each classroom video, agreement was calculated for all classroom activities included in the study (i.e., child-initiated, meals, teacher-directed small groups). IOA data were calculated for occurrences and classification using point-by-point agreement with a 5-second time window. Table 2 shows the IOA within and across activities by mand and teacher response types. The mean agreement for occurrences across all activities was 83.9% (73%–100%). The mean agreement for occurrences was 79.3%, 85.3%, and 87.1% for child-initiated activities, meals, and teacher-directed small group activities, respectively. All but one mean agreement percentage for coding categories was above 80% (81.8%–100%). The only coding category for which the mean agreement was below 80% was mands for attention-complex during meals (73.9%). This finding was likely due to children in several classrooms exhibiting zero to one attention-complex mands during meals. Therefore, the potential disagreement (i.e., having one occurrence or no occurrences) was higher. Occurrence agreement percentages and coding category agreement percentages were slightly lower in child-initiated activities compared with meals and teacher-directed small group activities, likely due to the activities having less structure. Less structured activities offer more opportunities for free expression and movement, which could increase coding difficulty.

Table 2

Interobserver Agreement Percentages for Mand Function and Teacher Response Categories for All Activities and Three Types of Activities (N = 6 Classrooms).

Mand type	All activities, M (Range)	Child-initiated, M (Range)	Meals, M (Range)	Teacher-directed small group, M (Range)
Attention-Simple	88.9 (50–100)	84.9 (67–100)	96.1 (88–100)	85.3 (50–100)
Attention-Complex	83.5 (0–100)	83.4 (67–100)	73.9 (0–100)	95 (75–100)
Tangible	87.7 (0–100)	83.3 (0–100)	100 (0)	81.8 (0–100)
Escape	100 (33–100)	100 (0)	100 (0)	100 (0)
Response-Match	86.2 (33–100)	88.1 (60–100)	84.2 (33–100)	86.5 (82–92)
Response-NoMatch	88.0 (59–100)	82.5 (67–100)	87.5 (58–100)	94.2 (83–100)
No Response	88.6 (50–100)	87.8 (75–100)	90 (50–100)	88.1 (57–100)

Results

Teacher Response Types to All Mands Across Activities

The first and second research questions focused on the proportion of child mands to which teachers responded and the proportion of teacher responses that matched the presumed function of all child mands across activities. Table 3 shows the total and average number of videos coded and the total and average duration of videos by activity. One thousand and 220 minutes (20.33 hours) of video were coded across all classrooms and activities. Children spent the most time in child-initiated activities (468 minutes, 7.8 hours) and the least time in meals (312 minutes, 5.2 hours), during the time of day in which video observations were collected. Across all activities and classrooms, children emitted 1223 mands, averaging 76.4 (SD = 36.2) mands per classroom from any child in any activity. The average rate of all mands was 1.01 per minute (SD = 0.46). The proportion of child mands to which teachers responded was 0.82 (SD = 0.46), and the proportion of teacher responses that matched the presumed function of any child mand was 0.55 (SD = 0.13). The standard deviations for all categories were large, suggesting noteworthy variability in the number of mands and teacher response types across classrooms. Table 4 shows the total number, average number, and rate of mands across all activities, within and across mand types.

Table 3.

Total Number and Duration of Activities Across Classrooms and Average Number and Duration of Activities Per Classroom by Activity Type.

Activity type	Number of activities across classrooms	Duration of video footage across classrooms (minutes)	Average number of activities per classroom	Average duration of video footage per classroom (minutes)
Child-Initiated	26	468.1	1.6	29.3
Meals	23	312.5	1.4	19.5
Teacher-Directed Small Groups	51	440.3	3.2	27.5

Note. Videos were collected in 16 classrooms. An activity type could occur more than once during the video recording.

Table 4.

Total Number, Average Number, and Average Rate of Mands Overall, by Activity, and by Mand Type.

Activity	All mands, Mean (SD)	Simple, Mean (SD)	Complex, Mean (SD)	Tangible, Mean (SD)	Escape, Mean (SD)
All activities
Total	1223	505	355	293	70
Average	76.4 (36.2)	31.6 (18.7)	22.2 (10.6)	18.3 (13.8)	4.4 (3.9)
Rate	1.00 (0.46)	0.41 (0.21)	0.29 (0.15)	0.24 (0.20)	0.06 (0.05)
CI
Total	503	229	149	106	19
Average	31.4 (20.1)	14.3 (12.1)	9.3 (6.9)	6.6 (5.5)	1.2 (1.1)
Rate	1.07 (0.39)	0.49 0.32)	0.32 (0.15)	0.23 (0.15)	0.04 (0.05)
Meals
Total	328	115	107	83	23
Average	20.5 (19.0)	7.2 (8.8)	6.7 (6.9)	5.2 (8.3)	1.4 (1.6)
Rate	1.05 (0.93)	0.37 (0.37)	0.34 (0.40)	0.27 (0.56)	0.07 (0.13)
TDS
Total	392	161	99	104	28
Average	24.5 (16.3)	10.1 (8.2)	6.2 (4.4)	6.5 (8.3)	1.7 (3.7)
Rate	0.89 (0.60)	0.37 (0.32)	0.22 (0.16)	0.24 (0.29)	0.06 (0.13)

Note. SD = standard deviation; CI = child initiated; TDS = teacher-directed small groups.

Teacher Response Types by Mand Type Across Activities

The third research question focused on if the proportion of teachers’ responses that matched the presumed function of children’s mands varied by mand type. Across all activities, children emitted attention-simple mands (M = 0.41 per minute) at the highest rate. This rate was nearly seven times the rate of mands for escape (M = 0.06 per minute). On average, the proportion of teacher response-match responses was highest for attention-simple mands (M = 0.68; see Figure 1) and lowest for tangible mands (M = 0.33). The proportion of teacher response-no match responses was lowest for attention-simple mands (M = .08) and the highest for tangible mands (M = 0.54). The highest proportion of teacher no responses (M = 0.24) occurred for attention-simple mands, nearly double the proportion of no responses for all other mand types.

Figure 1.

The Proportion of Teacher Responses to Children’s Mands by Mand Type Across All Activities and by Activity Type.

Teacher Response Types by Mand Type and Activity Type

Child Initiated Activities

The fourth research question focused on if the proportion of teacher responses that matched the presumed function of children’s mands varied by activity type. Table 4 shows the mand number and rates by mand type and activity type. Children spent an average of 29.3 minutes in child-initiated activities. Across classrooms, children emitted 503 mands during child-initiated activities, averaging 31.4 (SD = 20.1) mands per classroom. The highest number of mands were emitted in child-initiated activities. Across all mands in child-initiated activities, the mean proportion of mands to which teachers responded was .80 (SD = .11). The mean proportion of responses that matched the presumed function of all children’s mands in child-initiated activities was .56 (SD = .16).

Mands for attention-simple comprised approximately 46% of all mands during child-initiated activities. Mands for attention-complex, tangible, and escape comprised 29%, 21%, and 4%, respectively. Figure 1 shows the proportions of teacher responses by activity and child mand type. On average, the proportion of teacher responses that matched the presumed function of children’s mands occurred most for mands for attention-simple (M = .71, SD = .16), and the lowest proportion of response-match responses occurred with mands for escape (M = .36, SD = .43). The mean proportion of teacher response-no match responses was highest for mands for tangible (M = .50, SD = .21) and lowest for mands for attention-simple (M = .06, SD = .08). The lowest proportion of no responses occurred for mands for tangible (M = .11, SD = .12), and the highest proportion of no responses occurred for mands for attention-simple (M = .22, SD = .17).

Meals

Children spent an average of 19.5 minutes in meals across all classrooms. Children emitted 328 mands during meals at a mean rate of 1.05 (SD = .93) mands per minutes. The mean proportion of all mands to which teachers responded was .86 (SD = .18). The mean proportion of teacher responses that matched the presumed function of children’s mands was .54 (SD = .14).

Mands for attention-simple and attention-complex comprised 35.1% and 32.6% of all mands during meals, respectively. Mands for escape represented 7.0% of all mands. The mean rate of mands during meals was 1.05 (SD = .93; see Table 4). The mean mand rate for escape mands was .07 (SD = .13) per minutes, while the mean rate of mands for tangible was .27 (SD = .27). The mean proportion of teacher response-match responses was highest for mands for attention-simple (.72, SD = .28; see Figure 1) and lowest for mands for tangible (M = .29, SD = .37). The proportion of teacher response-no match responses was highest for mands for tangible (M = .61, SD = .40). The proportion of teacher response-match responses to escape mands was highest in meals at .58 (SD = .44) compared with the other two activities.

Teacher-Directed Small Groups

Across all classrooms, children spent an average of 27.5 minutes in teacher-directed small-group activities. Children emitted 392 mands across classrooms at a mean rate of .89 (SD = .60) mands per minutes. Mands for attention-simple comprised 41.1% of mands emitted during teacher-directed small group, compared with 26.5%, 25.3%, and 7.1% for tangible, attention-complex, and escape mands, respectively.

The proportion of response-match responses to any mand during teacher-directed small groups was .52 (SD = .23). The mean proportion of response-no match responses was .29 (SD = .16). Similar to the other two types of activities, the mean proportion of response-match responses was highest for attention-simple mands (M = .61, SD = .30). Children’s attention-complex, tangible, and escape were more likely to contact response-no match responses (M = .37, M = .52, M = .65, respectively) than a no-response (M = .13, M = .19, M = .13, respectively).

Discussion

Data from the present study describe if and for what function children were manding and how teachers contingently responded to those mands during three typically occurring preschool classroom activities. The response contingencies for mands in children’s early environments and the setting factors, which in this study were the types and features of three categories of preschool activities, influence if, when, how, and how often children mand. Many young children spend considerable time in early care and education (ECE) environments and have established or developing mand repertoires based on their characteristics and individual learning histories. The reinforcement contingencies for children’s mands operating in ECE classrooms shape how children use mand behaviors within and across activities.

The coding system used in the current study was designed to quantify teachers’ contingent responses to children’s mands and determine if the response matched the presumed function of the preceding child mand (i.e., did the teacher provide the specified reinforcer in the preceding mand). The data from this study, which were descriptions of how often (i.e., count), for what (i.e., function), and when (i.e., during which activities) children mand in ECE classrooms and the types of teacher contingent responses, provide preliminary information about the natural contingencies of reinforcement that might be affecting children’s mand behaviors within and across typical preschool activities. Using this information, early childhood practitioners, families, and researchers can consider how they support young children’s communication development, the potential environmental influences on children’s mand frequency and function, and teachers’ or familial caregivers’ capacity to respond contingently to those mands.

Matched Responding and Naturally Occurring Class-Wide Schedules of Reinforcement

On average, children emitted one mand per minute across the three activities, and teachers responded to approximately 82% of those mands and matched the presumed function for approximately 55% of those mands. These data suggest teachers generally respond to children’s mands and match the presumed function of approximately half of all emitted mands. When teachers use a matched response (i.e., the specified reinforcer), they provide reinforcement for that mand and support children’s positive communication behaviors. Data from this study represent a preliminary sample of the natural (i.e., without systematic manipulation or intervention) classroom-wide schedules of reinforcement (i.e., response-match teacher responses) potentially influencing children’s mand behaviors in these environments (Alber & Heward, 2000; Baer & Wolf, 1967). These natural, class-wide schedules represent a universal contingent responding support that teachers can provide to all children to promote effective and positive communication behavior and prevent the potential emergence of challenging behavior.

Results showed that, on average, mands from any child directed toward the lead teacher were on an approximate variable ratio (VR) 2 schedule of reinforcement, meaning that, on average, teachers were reinforcing one of every two mands. These natural schedules likely varied for each child as some children contributed more data (i.e., emitted more mands) than other children. Natural schedules for individual children or small groups of children could be higher or lower.

The proportion of response-match responses varied across mand and activity types, suggesting that multiple, concurrent schedules of reinforcement might exist for children’s mands within and across typically occurring preschool activities. For example, the average reinforcement schedule for tangible mands was closer to a VR4 (i.e., a matched response proportion of .40). The average reinforcement schedule for attention-complex mands was closer to a VR2. Even this slight variation in potential schedules suggests that multiple concurrent schedules (i.e., reinforcement schedules for different behaviors operating simultaneously) likely shape when, how often, and for what children mand in different activities. Mands that have accessed more frequent reinforcement are more likely to remain in a child’s communicative repertoire than mands that have accessed less frequent or no reinforcement. It should be noted that these schedules refer only to the natural schedules and potential reinforcement stemming from teacher responses to children’s mands. There are likely other sources of reinforcement influencing children’s mands in classrooms (e.g., peer responses, children’s ability to access the specific reinforcer without needing an explicit response from the teacher for escape or tangible), which would affect the natural contingencies and schedules of reinforcement operating on children’s mands. However, teachers should be aware of the mands they intentionally reinforce and the mands they want children to use but are not reinforcing. The former will be more likely to promote effective mand development and prevent the emergence of challenging behavior (McCammon et al., 2024).

Based on our review of the extant literature, data from the present study are the first to explore teachers’ responses to children’s mands during typical classroom activities and if their responses matched the presumed functions of children’s mands. Other researchers have examined classroom-wide schedules of reinforcement during studies focused on mand training procedures for teacher attention (e.g., Camilleri et al., 2008; Torelli et al., 2016) and conducted descriptive analyses for potential classroom-wide reinforcement contingencies for challenging behavior (e.g., McKerchar & Thompson, 2004). Analyzing the contingencies for children’s mands operating in preschool classrooms is a first step to understanding how children’s mands are shaped in early childhood classrooms through schedules of reinforcement.

In contrast to the present study examining teachers’ responses to any child mands in the absence of explicit instruction and intervention, studies focused on mand training have typically been conducted in one-to-one dyads and often in more controlled settings and are considered individualized supports within an MTSS framework (e.g., Bourret et al., 2004; Petursdottir et al., 2005; Pokorski et al., 2023). Adults in these studies (e.g., researchers, practitioners, or parents) typically require children to mand at higher-than-natural rates and provide dense schedules (i.e., fixed-ratio 1; FR1) for mand behaviors when children are first starting to mand (e.g., Endicott & Higbee, 2007; Shillingsburg & Valentino, 2011). Although FR1 schedules are essential for acquiring mand behaviors (Miltenberger, 1997), these are not natural contingencies, nor are they feasible for teachers to implement consistently (e.g., Alber & Heward, 2000; Sidener et al., 2006). Findings suggest FR1 reinforcement schedules were not in place as natural teacher response contingencies in the 16 preschool classrooms observed in the present study.

Schedule thinning is one strategy to reduce schedules of reinforcement to more natural contingencies and to decrease the type, frequency, and intensity of contingent responding within an MTSS framework. In their literature review focused on mand training parameters for children in school settings, Tapp and colleagues (2021) found that only 14% of included studies incorporated schedule thinning into intervention plans. Similarly, researchers typically do not describe how they have selected the different reinforcement schedules when using schedule thinning procedures. Similarly, the schedules are often thinner than those found during this study or are based on arbitrary time intervals. Analyses of classroom-wide schedules of reinforcement operating in children’s natural and free operant environments can help practitioners establish appropriate reinforcement schedules during schedule thinning that will naturally maintain children’s use of mand behaviors. Similarly, examining the environmental variables that might influence potential schedules of reinforcement for children’s mands might help researchers, practitioners, and familial caregivers make informed decisions about more appropriate or naturally occurring opportunities to embed learning opportunities to teach mands.

Implications for Practice

Using Activity Structure to Increase Mands

Results showed that children emitted different mand types at different rates across activities and that the proportion of response-match teacher responses varied by mand type and activity type. These results suggest that environmental variables such as activities’ structural and process features serve as setting factors (Fox & Conroy, 1995) that influence what children mand for and if and how teachers respond. One example is whether materials, specifically tangibles, were contingent on mand behaviors.

Results from the current study showed that meals in which teachers made access to tangibles contingent on appropriate mands had higher rates of mand behaviors compared with meals in which children had free access to tangibles. There were 83 tangible mands during meals, but nearly 40% were recorded for one classroom’s meal activity. In this classroom, children had to mand for the type of popsicle they wanted, and the teacher provided the popsicle contingent on the mand. In all other meals, children had noncontingent access to their food items. There was no explicit setting factor for them to emit mands for tangibles. The latter meal structure led to an average of 3.4 tangible mands per meal activity. Similarly, when food items were contingent on mands during the meal, the proportion of response-match teacher responses to tangible mands was 0.60, double the average proportion (0.29). Response-no match teacher responses were typically teacher prompts for a different mand form or phrase during this meal. The results suggest that structuring features of a meal routine so children’s access to food and drink was contingent on mands for those items were likely establishing operations for manding for those items, particularly if access to the food or drink was reinforcing.

There are developmentally appropriate and even recommended environmental arrangements that can increase children’s use of mands without unethically withholding food or drink items. Naturalistic approaches to instruction, including mand instruction, emphasize the importance of these environmental arrangements for evoking communication behaviors (e.g., Hemmeter & Kaiser, 1994; Snyder et al., 2015). Examples of these environmental arrangements include keeping food in closed containers (i.e., in sight but out of reach), serving family-style meals (to increase children having to ask peers or adults to pass the different food or drink choices), or giving slightly smaller portions of food when appropriate (to provide children with opportunities to ask for additional helpings). Practitioners can use these easy-to-implement universal strategies to make small changes to their meal routines to evoke mands to which they can contingently respond with the specified reinforcer. These natural and logical opportunities to support appropriate mand learning will support all young children’s effective communication development.

Opportunities to Mand for Escape

Results showed that children in the current study emitted mands for escape at a much lower rate compared with all other mand types. On average, escape mands were more likely to have response-no match teacher responses than attention mands. Escape mands were least likely to contact reinforcement in two of three activities (i.e., CI and meals). This finding is noteworthy, given findings from a systematic literature review conducted by Beavers et al. (2013) focused on reviewing 30 years of FAs conducted on challenging behavior. In this review, the function of children’s challenging behavior was determined to be escape in nearly 30% of all included FAs. Tapp and colleagues (2021) reviewed mand training procedures and parameters in school settings and found that children were taught escape mands in only 5% of studies. Rates for escape mands were possibly low due to children not being taught these mands or due to learning histories of escape mands not contacting reinforcement, as shown in the present study.

Opportunities for children to mand for escape, particularly for children to say no, are important to building children’s self-advocacy and self-determination skills (Zheng et al., 2025). Children are expected to participate in ongoing activities and complete specific tasks within early childhood classrooms. Nevertheless, frequent opportunities should be provided throughout the day when children choose not to participate in a particular activity or use certain materials, such as during free play or semi-structured activities in which children have more opportunities to make choices. For example, a child might be playing with a toy when another child asks to use it. It is okay for a child to express they do not want to give up their toy (e.g., by saying, “No thank you” or “I don’t want to share right now”). Providing reinforcement for these mands is critical for supporting appropriate communication behaviors. Teachers might make leaving certain activities contingent on manding for escape, such as supporting children to say “All done” or “Can I leave?” when they finish a meal or small group activity. Practitioners should observe when children spontaneously emit escape mands and provide specific reinforcement when appropriate.

Response Effort for Attention Mands

Results showed that teachers consistently matched the presumed function of child attention-simple mands at higher proportions than attention-complex mands. This pattern suggests that teacher response effort for child attention-complex mands was higher than for attention-simple mands. For a teacher’s response to a child’s attention-simple mand to be coded as a response-match, the teacher only had to acknowledge the child’s mand. For a teacher’s response to an attention-complex mand to be coded as a response-match, the teacher had to answer the child’s question or perform the requested action. In classrooms with 14 or more preschool children with varying abilities and competing child mands for attention, tangibles, or escape, it may be difficult for teachers to provide specific reinforcement for attention-complex mands. These competing demands could explain why mands for attention-complex were more likely to contact response-no match teacher responses than no response. In contrast, attention-simple mands were more likely to contact a no-response versus a response-no match.

Implications for Future Research

The present descriptive analysis adds to the extant literature on teachers’ contingent responses to children’s mands in preschool settings during typically occurring activities and routines to support mand learning and positive social-communicative interactions with adults and peers. It is important to note that this was a descriptive study and that no judgments were made about the accuracy or quality of the teachers’ responses, only if a contingent response occurred and if it did or did not match the presumed mand function.

Although the initial conceptualization of the coding system used in this study was to measure teachers’ responses to mands emitted by any child, the system could also be used to measure teacher responses to an individual child’s mands. In this study, we chose to examine the number and type of mands emitted by any child involved in the three types of activities rather than collecting child-specific data. Future use of the coding system might reveal if individual children contributed more data than other children and if these children had more established mand repertoires. The use of the coding system could also provide data about children who mand less or have less established mand repertoires and who would benefit from instruction to develop and maintain their mand repertoires. Using the coding system to examine how teachers respond to individual children’s mands would also provide data about whether they are getting the reinforcement needed to develop and maintain their mand repertoires. Data from the coding system might inform differentiated or individualized support for children or teachers.

The coding system could similarly be applied to measure teachers’ responses to children’s mands for children who use nonverbal or less conventional mand forms. In the present study, nonverbal mands were coded using stringent decision rules, given the inherent difficulty of presuming the function of nonverbal mand forms. Conventional gestures are more difficult to code for function because the specified reinforcer is not as clear (e.g., it is more difficult to see what a child is pointing to if they are not close to the desired item or person). The added difficulty of understanding the function of gestures or unconventional mand forms makes it more difficult for teachers to provide the specified reinforcer. For young children with or without disabilities who use these mand topographies or forms, their mands might not contact the same density of reinforcement as children who use spoken language, thereby hindering their mand acquisition and communication development. Although data in this study were not collected on how many mands were spoken versus gestural, the primary coder noted that most mands were spoken. Future research could focus on collecting data on how many mands were spoken compared with gestural and if the proportion of response-match responses varies based on the mand form or if children who use gestural mand forms contact more or less reinforcement than children who use spoken mand forms. Researchers could also focus specifically on contingent responses to children’s gestural mands and use this tool in professional development for practitioners to help promote the communication development of young children who use non-spoken mand forms.

Another potential use of the coding system would be to examine one child or multiple children’s challenging behaviors. This use could provide additional information on the link between appropriate mand development and the development of challenging behavior. Researchers can measure if and how teachers are responding to individual children’s socially appropriate mand forms and examine if children whose mands contact denser schedules of reinforcement exhibit lower levels of challenging behavior compared with children whose mands contact thinner schedules of reinforcement.

Finally, additional research is needed on children’s mands for escape in early childhood settings. The rates for mands for escape were much lower than all other mand types. In two of three activities, the proportion of response-match teacher responses was lowest for escape mands. This study’s definition of escape mands (e.g., request to leave an activity, rejecting an item) differs somewhat from the definition used in functional analyses (e.g., Iwata et al., 1994; Vollmer et al., 1995). Anecdotally, there were very few, if any, escape mands in which children were trying to escape demands (i.e., the escape mands used in functional analyses). Therefore, there might not be a direct link between escape mands, as defined in this study, and challenging behavior emitted for escape. Future research might focus on different types and forms of escape mands (e.g., mands to leave an activity, mands to reject an item, mands to escape a task or other demand) to explore how often children are emitting escape mands and how they might align with the development and maintenance of mands versus challenging behavior with escape functions.

Limitations

Several limitations should be considered when interpreting results from the present study. The first limitation is the potential for missed mand occurrences. Mands were the only verbal operant coded in the present study but were not the only verbal operant emitted by children in the classroom. Some mand behaviors were likely not coded because they presented as other verbal operants, particularly tacts. Tacts are communication behaviors where children see, hear, smell, taste, or touch someone or something in their environment and comment about it or label it. The primary function of a tact is to identify or name something in the environment. It often results in a contingent response from an adult or peer that is an acknowledgment, positive social praise, or elaboration. For example, a child playing in the dramatic play center while holding a bell says to the teacher, “I’m ringing a bell!” In the present study, this behavior would not be coded as a mand because the trigger for the child’s comment was presumed to be the child’s nonverbal action of ringing the bell. However, this behavior might have also served as an attention-simple mand if the child was trying to direct the teacher’s attention toward themselves.

Another limitation is the use of video versus live observation in the classrooms. Martin et al. (2022) found that extracting data from videos can result in auditory or visual issues. Video data collectors would keep the teacher in the frame but adjust video recording procedures so these children were not in the frame. There were times when coders could hear mands being emitted on the video but could not confirm if the mand came from a child on-screen or off-screen. Coders did not record mands emitted by children who were off-screen. Therefore, the mand count might have been underestimated. For these two reasons, the count of mands in the current study was possibly lower than the actual number of mands that occurred.

A third limitation is that each mand was classified into one mand category. Research has shown that socially inappropriate mand forms can serve multiple functions (i.e., Beavers et al., 2013), suggesting that appropriate mand forms can also serve multiple functions. Coders categorized mands into a single mand category based on what the child said or did using predetermined rules to assist with coding accuracy. Therefore, mands could serve multiple functions and potentially contact reinforcement even if the teacher did not provide a response-match. For example, if the child said, “I want to go to blocks (tangible), will you play with me there? (complex)” and the teacher said “I can’t play with you but you can go play in blocks” it is likely the child’s mand still contacted reinforcement. This could change the potential schedules of reinforcement for young children’s mands described in the present study.

Another limitation is the classification of teacher denials and unrelated responses to child mands as both response-no match. Although either of these responses does not provide the specified reinforcer, denials and other response-no match responses could have different effects on shaping children’s mands. Finally, the lack of access in the present study to individual child demographic data for all children in the classroom makes generalization of findings to children enrolled in other preschool classrooms somewhat limited.

Conclusions

The present study described the number and presumed function of children’s mands and their lead teachers’ contingent responses to those mands within and across three types of typically occurring preschool classroom activities. Results from the present study suggest that when children mand, teachers are more likely to respond than not respond. Teachers’ responses matched the presumed function of the mand behavior for approximately half of the children’s mands. Findings showed that teachers matched the presumed function of attention mands (simple and complex) more often than mands for tangible or escape. The data from this study provide a small sample of potential multiple and complex classroom-wide schedules of reinforcement influencing children’s mands in preschool classrooms during typically occurring activities and routines. The information from the present study is an initial step in understanding how often, when, and for whom mand learning is or is not being supported by teachers in preschool classrooms within and across different types of activities. Findings offer future directions for research and practice focused on classroom-wide, small-group, or individualized mand instruction to strengthen teachers’ contingent responses to children’s mands during typical preschool classroom activities and routines.

Footnotes

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the first author upon request. Restrictions apply to the availability of these data based on the requirements of original study from which the videos were derived.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Work reported in this paper was supported, in part, through grant R324A150076 from the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education to the University of Florida. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.

Ethical Considerations

This study received ethical approval from the University of Florida IRB (approval #IRB202200524) on April 26, 2022. This is an IRB-approved retrospective study, all patient information was de-identified and patient consent was not required. Patient data will not be shared with third parties.

ORCID iD

Sara Germansky

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