Decreasing noncompliance in a severely multihandicapped child

Abstract

The noncompliant behavior of a severely multihandicapped 6-year-old boy was modified through systematic manipulations of an instructional antecedent. Responding to teacher requests within 5 seconds was measured under three conditions: decreased rate of commands, increased rate of commands, and unconditional rate of commands, coupled with contingent consequation. A multielement design was employed to evaluate differential effectiveness. Increasing the density of instructional commands and reinforcing discrete compliant responses was found to be the most effective treatment package for controlling behavior. Commands issued at a frequent and consistent pace reduced inappropriate responding to zero, suggesting the viable potential of this antecedent as a variable in programming for noncompliant children.Noncompliance refers to failure to comply with an instruction and is noted if: (a) no response is forthcoming, (b) no response is initiated within a prespecified time, or (c) some other, nonrequested behavior is performed. Noncompliance is frequently identified as a misbehavior that presents educators and trainers with serious management control problems. Wehman and McLaughlin (1979) reported in a survey of teachers of 145 severely and profoundly handicapped students that noncompliance was designated as the most prevalent behavior problem in both public and residential school students.Numerous research studies have addressed methods and procedures to establish or enhance appropriate responding in noncompliant individuals. Some researchers have focused upon positive reinforcement procedures for controlling behavior. have served as positive approaches to effect increases in compliance in the absence of aversive controls of behavior.Proportionately more researchers have incorporated negative deterrents for noncompliance with positive reinforcement of compliance as a means of managing behavior ) have been employed effectively to decrease noncompliant responding.Research relating to the issue of noncompliance has revealed extensive emphasis upon the manipulation of consequential events rather than antecedent events. While consequences serve to accelerate or decelerate behavior, antecedents facilitate or elicit desired behavior (Berman, 1973). Antecedents, therefore, may provide a vehicle by which skills are developed and misbehaviors are concurrently diminished.The systematic manipulation of one antecedent, instruction, has demonstrated promising results. Baron, Kaufman, and Stauber (1969) examined the differential effects of Reprint requests should be sent to Sharon F. Schoen, 3251 Disston St., Philadelphia, PA 19149. 'This paper contributed to the research component of Project MHSH, a USOE grant, BEH #G008101883, awarded to Lehigh University. and oppositional behavior of children.

The sequential introduction of compliance training components with elementary-aged children in general education classroom settings.

“…In addition to the alpha versus beta command distinction, several other characteristics of instructions have received attention. Among these are the rate of instruction delivery (Schoen, 1986; Williams & Forehand, 1984), positive (i.e., “do”) versus negative (i.e., “don’t”) commands (Houlihan & Jones, 1990; Neef, Shafer, Egel, Cataldo, & Parrish, 1983), and instruction difficulty (Houlihan, Vincent et al, 1994b).…”

Training teachers to give effective commands: effects on student compliance, academic engagement, and academic responding

“…Glass (1988) showed that commands given at a high rate, especially beta commands, may escalate negative interactions. Additional studies indicate that the use of beta commands lessens the likelihood of compliance (Forehand & Scarboro, 1975;Peed, Roberts, & Forehand, 1977;Roberts & Powers, 1988;Schoen, 1986;Williams & Forehand, 1984).…”

Teachers’ Commands and Their Role in Preschool Classrooms

“…Not only have command form and specificity been found to be predictors of compliance, the rate with which commands are elicited has also been found to be an important variable in compliance (Plummer, Baer, & LeBlanc, 1977;Shoen, 1986). Atwater and Morris (1988) indicated that when rate of teacher instruction averaged between 1 and 2 commands per minute compliance stayed above 70 percent.…”