Attention training: the use of overcorrection avoidance to increase the eye contact of autistic and retarded children.
A quick head-turn avoidance prompt plus edibles can push eye contact from about half the time to nearly all the time in children who once ignored faces.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Three children with autism or intellectual disability rarely looked at adults. The team wanted more eye contact during table work.
They tried two setups in fast rotation. One gave candy and praise when the child looked. The other added a brief overcorrection avoidance step: if eyes stayed down, the adult gently guided the child’s head up for two seconds, then released.
What they found
Candy plus praise alone peaked around 55% eye contact. When the short head-turn avoidance was added, eye contact jumped to about 90%.
The jump happened quickly and stayed high while the condition was in place.
How this fits with other research
Jenkins et al. (1973) used full overcorrection to stop hand-flapping and rocking. The 1977 study keeps the same idea but shrinks it to a tiny avoidance cue for a new skill—looking up.
Conine et al. (2020) later showed that tasty items plus quick prompts also teach kids with autism to respond to their name fast. Both papers say: pair tangible reinforcers with a brief prompt when attention is low.
English et al. (1995) and Repp et al. (1992) taught children and adults with ID to read faces, not make eye contact. Together they form a line: behavioral drills can build many visual social skills if you pick the target and add strong reinforcers.
Why it matters
If a child ignores your face, first check that candy or praise is working. If not, add a two-second gentle prompt that the child can avoid by looking up. This tiny overcorrection avoidance step can double eye contact without tears or long restraint. Try it next session: keep the prompt brief, release the moment eyes meet yours, and pile on the reinforcer.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
A crucial first step in teaching and training the retarded and autistic is to develop and maintain eye contact with the therapist. Functional movement training (an overcorrection procedure) plus edibles and praise were compared with edibles and praise alone as a method of developing eye contact in three such children. In both conditions, the child was given food and praise when eye contact occurred within 5 sec of the therapist's verbal prompt: "Look at me." Functional movement training avoidance plus edibles and praise produced about 90% attention for the three children, while edibles and praise alone were less effective (eye contact never exceeded 55%). Functional movement training avoidance combined with edibles and praise appears to be an effective method of teaching eye contact and possibly other forms of instruction-following to behaviorally disordered children who are not always responsive to positive consequences.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1977 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1977.10-489