OBJECTIVE: Children with autism often demonstrate distress and oppositionality when exposed to requests to complete academic or household tasks. Errorless academic compliance training is a success-focused, noncoercive intervention for improving child cooperation with such activities. In the present study, the authors evaluated treatment and generalization effects of this intervention on four children diagnosed with autism. METHOD: In a multiple baseline across-subjects design, parents delivered a range of academic and nonacademic requests to their children to determine the probability of compliance for each request. A hierarchy of academic requests ranging from those yielding high compliance (level 1) to those yielding low compliance (level 4) was then developed. Treatment began with the concentrated delivery of level 1 requests, with praise and reward for compliant responses. Over several weeks, children were gradually introduced to requests from subsequent probability levels with continued reward for compliance. RESULTS: High compliance levels were demonstrated throughout and following treatment. Evidence of generalization to untrained academic requests and nonacademic requests emerged. Treatment gains were maintained up to 6 months after treatment. CONCLUSIONS: Errorless academic compliance training appears to be an effective intervention for enhancing generalized compliance in children with autism.
OBJECTIVE:Children with autism often demonstrate distress and oppositionality when exposed to requests to complete academic or household tasks. Errorless academic compliance training is a success-focused, noncoercive intervention for improving child cooperation with such activities. In the present study, the authors evaluated treatment and generalization effects of this intervention on four children diagnosed with autism. METHOD: In a multiple baseline across-subjects design, parents delivered a range of academic and nonacademic requests to their children to determine the probability of compliance for each request. A hierarchy of academic requests ranging from those yielding high compliance (level 1) to those yielding low compliance (level 4) was then developed. Treatment began with the concentrated delivery of level 1 requests, with praise and reward for compliant responses. Over several weeks, children were gradually introduced to requests from subsequent probability levels with continued reward for compliance. RESULTS: High compliance levels were demonstrated throughout and following treatment. Evidence of generalization to untrained academic requests and nonacademic requests emerged. Treatment gains were maintained up to 6 months after treatment. CONCLUSIONS: Errorless academic compliance training appears to be an effective intervention for enhancing generalized compliance in children with autism.
Authors: Michael G Aman; Christopher J McDougle; Lawrence Scahill; Benjamin Handen; L Eugene Arnold; Cynthia Johnson; Kimberly A Stigler; Karen Bearss; Eric Butter; Naomi B Swiezy; Denis D Sukhodolsky; Yaser Ramadan; Stacie L Pozdol; Roumen Nikolov; Luc Lecavalier; Arlene E Kohn; Kathleen Koenig; Jill A Hollway; Patricia Korzekwa; Allison Gavaletz; James A Mulick; Kristy L Hall; James Dziura; Louise Ritz; Stacie Trollinger; Sunkyung Yu; Benedetto Vitiello; Ann Wagner Journal: J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry Date: 2009-12 Impact factor: 8.829