Citation

Fisher WW, Ninness HA, Piazza CC, Owen-DeSchryver JS. J. Appl. Behav. Anal. 1996; 29(2): 235-238.

Affiliation

Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, Maryland 21205, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1996, Wiley-Blackwell)

DOI

10.1901/jaba.1996.29-235

PMID

8682738

PMCID

PMC1279897

Abstract

During a functional analysis, a boy with autism and oppositional defiant disorder displayed destructive behavior that was maintained by attention in the form of verbal reprimands (e.g., "Don't hit me"). In a second analysis, contingent verbal reprimands produced higher rates of the behavior than contingent statements that were unrelated to the target response (e.g., "It is sunny today"), suggesting that some forms of attention were more reinforcing than others. A treatment based on these analyses reduced the behavior to near-zero levels.

Language: en