Autistic self-stimulation and intertrial interval duration.

The relationship of short vs. long intertrial intervals to autistic children's correct responding and autistic self-stimulatory behavior was examined. Measures were also obtained on the children's other types of self-stimulatory behavior during all conditions of the experiment. The results showed that: (a) for any given child/task combination, short intertrial intervals produced decreased levels of autistic self-stimulatory responding, (b) increased levels of correct responding occurred during the short intertrial interval conditions, and (c) the category of "other" self-stimulatory behavior was not systematically related to either correct responding or to the length of the intertrial interval. These results were discussed in terms of their implications for understanding self-stimulatory behavior and for teaching autistic children.