Procedural variations of using competing stimuli in the treatment of automatically maintained behavior

Document Type

Thesis

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Psychology

Degree

M.S. Applied Behavior Analysis

Date Completed

2022

First Committee Member

Ahearn, William

Second Committee Member

Roscoe, Eileen

Third Committee Member

Henley, Amy

Abstract

"Stereotypy is a defining characteristic of autism. Stereotypy often interferes with skill acquisition and can also being stigmatizing to other individuals. Stereotypy is often found to have an automatic function of behavior in which the completion of the behavior is reinforcing in it of itself which makes treatment of this type of behavior challenging. One common intervention to decrease rates of stereotypy and other automatically maintained behaviors has been the use of competing items. The purpose of the current study was to examine the procedural variations of rotating competing items and prompting engagement with effective competing stimuli to decrease rates of automatically maintained problem behavior including, stereotypy and mild self-injury, while increasing functional engagement."

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