Assessment of problem behavior evoked by disruption of ritualistic toy arrangements in a child with autism.
A child who hits when his toy line is moved can trade a "fix it" card for the ritual and aggression stops.
01Research in Context
What this study did
One child with autism hit and screamed when his toy lines were moved.
The team tested two ways to mess up his ritual: taking a toy away or shifting it to a new spot.
They taught the boy to hand over a card that said "fix it" instead of melting down.
What they found
When the card worked and the adult fixed the line, problem behavior dropped fast.
The same drop happened in both the removal test and the relocation test.
FCT plus extinction gave big, clear cuts in aggression across both toy games.
How this fits with other research
Rispoli et al. (2014) ran the same FCT-plus-extinction plan with three kids and added schedule thinning.
Both papers show the ritual is the reinforcer; the 2014 study proves the effect lasts after you thin.
Storch et al. (2012) saw mixed results when adults took control of stereotypy objects.
Their lone positive case hints that letting the child ask for control, as Yanerys did, may be the key piece.
Why it matters
If your learner blows up when blocks are nudged, try a simple "fix it" card.
Test it in two quick contexts—toy gone and toy moved—to be sure the function is ritual repair.
One card plus extinction beat the tantrum here and in later kids; start Monday and track the first ten trials.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
A functional analysis suggested that the problem behavior of a 9-year-old girl with autism was maintained by gaining the opportunity to restore ritualistic toy arrangements that had been disrupted. Functional communication training and extinction produced clear decreases in problem behavior in 2 contexts: 1 in which we removed a play item, and 1 in which we merely relocated the item and blocked its rearrangement.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 2013 · doi:10.1002/jaba.41