Introductory remarks: long-term follow-up of behavioral interventions for challenging behaviors in persons with developmental disabilities

A 10 year follow-up of stereotypic behavior with eight participants

“…Although formal analysis of stereotyped behavior has been undertaken for the last 50 years (Levy, 1944;Lourie, 1949), there has been no longitudinal study which reported on the manifestation of stereotypy over an extensive time period. Indeed, in the ®eld of behavior analysis in general there have been very few longterm follow-up studies carried out with people with developmental disabilities (Sturmey, 1997). Notable exceptions include the studies by Foxx and Livesay (1984) and Foxx, Bittle, and Faw (1989) and the more recent studies by Ellison (1997) and by McGlynn and Locke (1997).…”