Decreasing Vocal Stereotypy in Individuals with Autism with Limited Vocal Verbal Repertoire

1. Decreasing Vocal Stereotypy in Individuals with Autism with Limited Vocal Verbal Repertoire EIMEAR MCMAHON, Lori Cesana, & William H. Ahearn CONCLUSIONS RESPONSE MEASUREMENT & RELIABILITY RESULTS • Levels of engagement during both CI & Enhanced CI were almost 100% across sessions • Average time spent in RIRD treatment decreased during each phase from 20.05% in Phase 1 to 4.41% in Phase 3 and produced very low levels (1.63%) during several sessions in Phase 3 • Response Interruption and Redirection Motor (RIRDm) was effective in reducing vocal stereotypy (VS) • Competing items (CI) reduced levels of VS but not as much as in RIRDm • Enhanced CI further reduced levels of VS and was an effective treatment • VS was defined as any noncontextual vocalization • Engagement was defined as touching, holding, or playing with the item • A functional analysis suggested that VS was not maintained by social contingencies • IOA was collected for 33% of all sessions and averaged above 90% COMPETING ITEMS ENGAGEMENT INTRODUCTION PROCEDURE • Evidence suggests that VS is maintained by automatically reinforcing consequences produced by engaging in the behavior (Ahearn et al., 2007; Rapp & Vollmer, 2005; Rincover, 1978) • RIRD has proven to be an effective treatment in reducing VS using vocal compliances (Ahearn et al., 2007) • Ahrens et al. (2011) suggested that RIRDm may be effective in reducing VS in those with a limited vocal verbal repertoire • Another effective means of decreasing VS is providing access to items that compete with the sensory consequences produced by the behavior (Piazza et al., 2000) • Competing items assessment - items with a low rate of VS and high rate of engagement were used during CI, more moderately competing items were used during RIRDm • Baseline - the student was prompted to mand for the item placed on the table using least to most prompting; no programmed consequences for VS • RIRDm - same as baseline except VS resulted in item removal and motor compliances were presented until three consecutive compliances were emitted without VS • Competing Items – free access to highly preferred item TREATMENT RESULTS RIRD TREATMENT TIMES PURPOSE To compare RIRDm and CI treatments for an individual with a limited vocal verbal repertoires PARTICIPANT AND SETTING • A 14-year-old boy diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder • A 3 m x 1.5 m room equipped with video recording equipment, microphone, timers, two chairs, and two items previously selected during a competing items assessment www.necc.org