Attention Span: An Operant Conditioning Analysis

Abstract

The short attention span of brain damaged and retarded children is often discussed as though it were an absolute and unmanipulable entity. Alternatively, an operant conditioning analysis considers attention span as manipulable and improvable. This approach emphasizes the importance of specifying the behavioral referents of attention span and offers, to those concerned with the education of the mentally retarded, a wide variety of effective behavioral control techniques.