RECREATING THE SCENE: AN EFFECTIVE WAY TO PROVIDE DELAYED PUNISHMENT FOR INAPPROPRIATE MOTOR BEHAVIOR

A mediated punishment procedure that involved recreating a behavioral sequence by guiding the subject through the behavior in the situation in which it occurred was used to suppress several severe problem behaviors in two developmentally delayed children. The mediational procedure was first used with a 4-year-old autistic boy for biting and then for foot stomping. Next the procedure was used for stealing and hoarding behavior with a multiply handicapped 17-year-old girl. Results indicated that the procedure was effective and produced relatively rapid results. One advantage of the procedure is that it provides an opportunity for trained personnel to apply restrictive procedures to low frequency behavior that occurs in their absence rather than relying on less qualified staff to implement the procedure immediately after the behavior occurs.     

Response restriction and substitution with autistic children.

Few studies to date have examined time reallocation in naturalistic, multiresponse human repertoires when one or more responses are restricted. For this experiment, free-operant baseline levels of six responses were measured for four autistic children. The high-probability responses were made unavailable, one at a time, such that subjects had access to five, four, three, and two responses in successive restriction conditions. A return to the six-response free-operant baseline condition completed the experiment. Results were compared to predictions made by four time-reallocation models. These results were described accurately only by the selective substitution model. Further analyses examined alternative explanations for the individual reallocation patterns obtained. An expanded selective substitution definition is proposed that may characterize orderly patterns observed in multiresponse repertoires under restriction conditions more accurately than the other existing models.     

CONTINGENT EXERCISE: A MILD BUT POWERFUL PROCEDURE FOR SUPPRESSING INAPPROPRIATE VERBAL AND AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR

Two single-subject experiments were conducted in public school classrooms for severely emotionally disturbed children. Both experiments investigated the effects of a treatment requiring a child to exhibit a simple exercise task after a verbal or aggressive response, using reversal and multiple-baseline designs. The independent variable, contingent exercise, required standing up and sitting on the floor five to ten times contingent on an inappropriate behavior. It was found that contingent exercise was easy to carry out, and following it, the child quickly returned to the learning task that had been interrupted by the inappropriate behavior. The contingent exercise procedure required a minimum of prompting or manual guidance. Although contingent exercise was not topographically related to the inappropriate response, it decreased those responses dramatically. The results suggested that contingent exercise was not only more powerful than DRO but also could be administered independently. It was concluded that contingent exercise may constitute an alternative procedure that can be used by therapists confronted with severely abnormal behaviors. It would appear to be particularly relevant in settings where procedures such as timeout and painful consequences find restricted use. Finally, a number of guidelines have been proposed as a safeguard against the misuse of this mild but powerful procedure.     

MOTIVATING AUTISTIC CHILDREN THROUGH STIMULUS VARIATION

This study evaluated the differential effectiveness of two methods of presenting discrimination tasks when teaching autistic children. In a constant task condition, the common method of presenting a single task throughout a session was used. In a varied task condition, the same task was interspersed with a variety of other tasks from the children's clinic curricula. Results showed declining trends in correct responding during the constant task condition, with substantially improved and stable responding during the varied task condition. In addition, naive observers judged the children to be more enthusiastic, interested, happier, and better behaved during the varied task sessions. These results suggest that “boredom” may be a particularly important variable to control in the treatment of autistic children, and that particular care may be necessary when defining criteria for task acquisition. The results are discussed in relation to the literature on increased responsivity to stimulus novelty and variation.     

INTERTRIAL INTERVAL DURATION AND LEARNING IN AUTISTIC CHILDREN

This study investigated the influence of intertrial interval duration on the performance of autistic children during teaching situations. The children were taught under the same conditions existing in their regular programs, except that the length of time between trials was systematically manipulated. With both multiple baseline and repeated reversal designs, two lengths of intertrial interval were employed: short intervals with the S^D for any given trial presented approximately one second following the reinforcer for the previous trial versus long intervals with the S^D presented four or more seconds following the reinforcer for the previous trial. The results showed that: (1) the short intertrial intervals always produced higher levels of correct responding than the long intervals; and (2) there were improving trends in performance and rapid acquisition with the short intertrial intervals, in contrast to minimal or no change with the long intervals. The results are discussed in terms of utilizing information about child and task characteristics in terms of selecting optimal intervals. The data suggest that manipulations made between trials have a large influence on autistic children's learning.     

THE FACILITATIVE EFFECTS OF INCIDENTAL TEACHING ON PREPOSITION USE BY AUTISTIC CHILDREN

In a comparison of incidental teaching and traditional training procedures, three language-delayed autistic children were taught expressive use of prepositions to describe the location of preferred edibles and toys. Traditional highly structured training and incidental teaching procedures were used in a classroom setting, and generalization was assessed during free-play sessions. Results clearly indicate that incidental teaching promoted greater generalization and more spontaneous use of prepositions. These findings have important implications for language programming and teacher training, suggesting that incidental teaching should be included as a standard component of language development curricula for autistic and other developmentally delayed children.     

INCREASING THE INDEPENDENT RESPONDING OF AUTISTIC CHILDREN WITH UNPREDICTABLE SUPERVISION

We investigated the role of predictable versus unpredictable supervision on the independent task responding of three autistic children. In a predictable supervision condition, the therapist was present in the setting for a regular period of time and then was absent for the remainder of the session. In an unpredictable supervision condition, the therapist's presence was scheduled on a random, intermittent, and unpredictable basis throughout the session. The multiple baseline analysis showed that the unpredictable supervision produced much higher levels of on-task responding during the therapist's absence for all three children. Analysis of work completed during the therapist's absence also favored the unpredictable supervision condition. The results are discussed in relation to the literature on generalization and educational practice.     

THE LIMITS AND MOTIVATING POTENTIAL OF SENSORY STIMULI AS REINFORCERS FOR AUTISTIC CHILDREN

This study investigated the reinforcing properties, limits, and motivating potentials of sensory stimuli with autistic children. In the first phase of the study, four intellectually retarded autistic children were exposed to three different types of sensory stimulation (vibration, music, and strobe light) as well as edible and social reinforcers for ten-second intervals contingent upon six simple bar pressing responses. In the second phase, the same events were used as reinforcers for correct responses in learning object labels. The results indicated that: (a) sensory stimuli can be used effectively as reinforcers to maintain high, durable rates of responding in a simple pressing task; (b) ranked preferences for sensory stimuli revealed a unique configuration of responding for each child; and (c) sensory stimuli have motivating potentials comparable to those of the traditional food and social reinforcers even when training receptive language tasks.     

A METHOD FOR INTEGRATING AN AUTISTIC CHILD INTO A NORMAL PUBLIC-SCHOOL CLASSROOM1

This study investigated the feasibility of using behavioral techniques to integrate an autistic child into a normal public-school class with one teacher and 20 to 30 normal children. The results showed: (1) that during treatment by a therapist in the classroom, the child's appropriate verbal and social behaviors increased, and autistic mannerisms decreased; and (2) training teachers in behavioral techniques was apparently sufficient to maintain the child's appropriate school behaviors throughout kindergarten and the first grade.     

ASSESSING AND TRAINING TEACHERS IN THE GENERAUZED USE OF BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION WITH AUTISTIC CHILDREN1

This study investigated the feasibility of developing reliable, valid criteria for measuring and training the skills necessary to teach autistic children. The behaviors of 11 teachers and 12 autistic children were recorded in a series of different teaching situations. Teacher-training was initiated at different times for different teachers. The results showed: (1) it was possible to assess empirically whether a teacher was correctly using defined behavior-modification techniques; (2) generally, for any given session, systematic improvement in the child's behavior did not occur unless the teacher working in that session had been trained to use the techniques to a high criterion; (3) all 11 teachers were rapidly trained to use these techniques; and (4) the teachers learned generalized skills effective with a variety of children and target behaviors.