Academic task completion is essential to success in school, and academic activity across individuals appears to be maintained by different variables. The purpose of this study was to assess variables that might promote higher or lower levels of academic engagement. Participants were six general education students in elementary school, and academic engagement was observed for each participant in various conditions: feedback about correct answers, attention for completion, contingent edibles, distraction, and ignore. All participants showed lowest rates of academic engagement in the distraction condition (i.e., when other items were available noncontingently and no attention was available). The condition with the highest level of completion varied across participants. The results of this study suggest that the context may be just as important for task completion as social reinforcement.

完成学业任务对于在学校取得成功至关重要，而且个人之间的学业活动似乎由不同的变量维持。本研究的目的是评估可能促进更高或更低水平的学术参与的变量。参与者是六名小学的普通教育学生，并观察了每个参与者在各种条件下的学术参与度：关于正确答案的反馈、对完成的关注、偶然的食物、分心和忽视。所有参与者在分心条件下的学术参与率最低（即，当其他项目非偶然可用且没有注意力时）。完成程度最高的条件因参与者而异。