Teaching self-control to reduce overt food stealing by children with autism and developmental disorders |
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Authors: | Liming Zhou Xiaoyi Hu Yuxin Zhai Geyi Zhang Xin Wang |
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Institution: | 1. Education Research Center for Children with Autism, School of Special Education, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China;2. ING CARE Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing, China;3. ASD Community Support Service, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia |
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Abstract: | Food stealing is often a serious behavioral problem among children with diagnoses of autism and other developmental disorders. Very few empirical studies concerning this behavioral challenge have been reported. We applied a correspondence training procedure to teach self-control as replacement behavior to four children with autism and developmental disorders who displayed food stealing in the community. A changing criterion design embedded within a nonconcurrent multiple-probe across participants design was used. The treatment succeeded for all four participants by increasing latency to eating highly preferred food to a predetermined criterion and reducing occurrences of food stealing to zero. Three participants generalized the replacement behavior to natural settings and maintained the behavior for 2 weeks, 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, and 4 months. One participant without expressive language was taught successfully during treatment trials but failed to maintain and generalize the behavior. A functional relation between delaying food eating and Say-Do correspondence training was demonstrated. |
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Keywords: | autism correspondence training food stealing self-control |
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