Practice Makes Perfect:The Elimination of Stereotyped Body-Rocking Through Positive Practice

A positive practice procedure was used in a public school classroom to reduce the frequency of body-rocking on a 16-year old severely retarded girl. Although previous interventions (DRO, time out, verbal instructions) had proven ineffective, positive practice rapidly reduced the frequency of body-rocking to near zero levels in 7 days of treatment. The procedures were easily carried out and cost-effective, requiring approximately 9 minutes of staff time per day during 20 days of treatment and 1.4 minutes/day during a 135-day follow-up period. Six months of follow-up revealed that response suppression was durable. Little generalization of suppression was observed from the training setting to other settings.