BEHAVIORAL MOMENTUM AND STIMULUS FADING IN THE ACQUISITION AND MAINTENANCE OF CHILD COMPLIANCE IN THE HOME

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Abstract
The provision of a series of requests to which compliance is highly likely (high‐probability requests) immediately antecedent to low‐probability requests has been used to establish behavioral momentum of compliance. We evaluated a fading procedure for maintaining high levels of compliance obtained with high‐probability requests. Fading involved a systematic reduction in the number of high‐probability requests and an increase in the latency between the high‐ and low‐probability requests. High levels of compliance for both “do” and “don't” requests were maintained for 16 weeks in a 5‐year‐old boy with developmental disabilities after the high‐probability request sequence was faded. Similar maintenance was obtained for “do” requests in a 15‐year‐old girl with developmental disabilities. For this subject, however, the high‐probability request sequence was ineffective with “don't” requests. When “don't” requests were phrased as “do” requests, the high‐probability request sequence produced high levels of compliance to the low‐probability request. High levels of compliance to these “do” requests were maintained for 16 weeks after the high‐probability request sequence was faded.