Interspersed requests: a nonaversive procedure for reducing aggression and self-injury during instruction.
Sprinkle quick, easy demands that the learner usually follows between harder tasks to cut aggression and boost compliance.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with adults who had severe intellectual disability. Each person hit, bit, or head-banged when staff gave tough learning tasks.
Staff slipped quick, easy requests between the hard ones. "Touch your nose" or "Give me five" came first. The hard task stayed the same.
What they found
Compliance jumped and problem behavior dropped. The easy requests acted like a warm-up before the hard lift.
No extra rewards were given. The simple act of following an easy direction made the next hard one easier to accept.
How this fits with other research
Martin et al. (1997) and Hanley et al. (1997) got the same drop in self-injury, but they used free snacks or attention on a timer. Goldstein et al. (1991) shows you can reach the same goal without any goodies at all.
Rasmussen et al. (2006) moved the timer idea into a classroom. Bouck et al. (2016) did the same with escape breaks. Both kept the easy, noncontingent theme and still cut problem behavior.
Iwata et al. (1990) warned that sensory play rooms can fake success. Goldstein et al. (1991) answers that warning with a clear, behavioral antecedent fix that holds up.
Why it matters
You can start this Monday. Pick three requests the learner already follows 90% of the time. Slide one in before every hard demand. No extra tokens, no candy, no timer needed. It’s a zero-cost way to warm up compliance and cool down aggression.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Interspersed requests are simple commands, with a high likelihood of being followed correctly, that are interspersed among instructional trials to increase the probability that a learner will attempt to perform new or difficult tasks without engaging in aggression or self-injurious behavior. This report presents two assessments of the effect of interspersed requests on aggression and self-injury during instruction. The participants were individuals with severe mental retardation who used aggression and self-injury to avoid difficult instructional situations. Results from both studies indicate that interspersed requests were effective at increasing the responsiveness of the learners to instructions and reducing levels of aggression and self-injury.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1991 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1991.24-265