| Abstract: | Vomiting of nonmedical origin by retarded persons has been found to be greatly influenced by reinforcement procedures. To explicate the possible influence of the rate and amount of food intake, a satiation procedure and a spaced-eating procedure were provided to three profoundly retarded adults with this problem. Vomiting was found to double or triple after satiation for each subject, and to decrease during spaced eating for each subject; the decrease was especially great for the two subjects who learned to eat most slowly after extended spaced eating training. These results suggest that vomiting is caused in large part by excessive stomach loading and can be effectively treated by reducing the eating rate and/or amount of food intake. This generalization may also apply to infants and to the bulimic binge-purge cycle of nonretarded adults. |
