Modification of self-injurious behavior. An analysis of the use of contingently applied protective equipment.
Slapping on soft helmet and mittens right after self-hits can crash multiply controlled SIB in deaf-blind teens and keep it down for half a year.
01Research in Context
What this study did
A deaf-blind teen hit and bit himself many times each day.
The team put a padded helmet and mittens on him only right after each self-hit or bite.
They ran an ABAB design: baseline, gear on, gear off, gear on again.
What they found
Self-injury dropped sharply every time the gear followed the act.
Two and six months later the low rates were still there.
No extra reinforcement or drugs were needed.
How this fits with other research
Rayfield et al. (1982) tried the same idea four years earlier but added treats and later took the gear away.
Luiselli (1989) swapped helmet and mittens for gloves and got the same big drop in skin picking, showing the trick works with other gear.
Fisher et al. (2004) went further: they proved the gear works like sensory extinction by removing padding for just one body part and watching only that hit come back.
Matson et al. (1994) asked why it works and said the brief gear time acts more like punishment than extinction, giving us the mechanism.
Why it matters
If a client’s SIB has many causes and other plans failed, try helmet and mittens right after each blow.
You can start tomorrow with simple safety gear already in the closet and see change within days.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Although the application of contingently applied protective equipment represents a promising approach to the treatment of self-injurious behavior, limited experimental evaluation of such methodology has been performed. The present study examined the effects of using contingent protective equipment to control multiple forms of self-injury in a 161/2-year-old developmentally disabled boy who was both deaf and blind. The program entailed applying a padded helmet and mittens for a predefined duration whenever targeted self-injurious responses were emitted. Data on self-injury were recorded throughout the boy's daily schedule in a residential facility within the context of an ABAB single-case design. Results indicated that the program of contingently applied protective equipment produced marked decreases in the rate of self-injury and that low levels of responding were maintained during 2-and 6-month follow-up assessments. A social validation questionnaire revealed that staff members judged the treatment program to be an effective and acceptable method of intervention. Critical issues regarding the implementation of contingent protective equipment are discussed.
Behavior modification, 1986 · doi:10.1177/01454455860102003