Reduction of rapid eating by normal adults.
Shaping with praise and bite rewards quickly slowed rapid eating in adults, and the calm pace stayed when the food rewards stopped.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Touchette et al. (1985) worked with three adults who ate too fast. The team used shaping. They gave extra food, praise, and self-approval when meals lasted longer. They tracked meal time across baseline and treatment phases using a multiple-baseline design.
What they found
All three adults slowed down to normal eating speed. The longer meals stuck even after the extra food stopped. Praise and self-approval alone kept the new pace.
How this fits with other research
Nishimura et al. (1987) got the same fast-eating adults to slow down, but they used DRL plus prompts instead of shaping. The two studies show different roads to the same goal.
Bailey et al. (1970) and Hake et al. (1972) fixed other mealtime problems like stealing and messiness with timeout and BST. Their work proves adult mealtime behaviors are trainable, setting the stage for rate shaping.
Zhou et al. (2023) moved the idea to kids with autism. They taught waiting before eating, extending the meal-control concept to a new group.
Why it matters
You can normalize eating speed in adults without special equipment. Pair small bites of extra food with praise and teach clients to praise themselves. Fade the food quickly; social rewards maintain the pace. Try this first with any adult who finishes meals in under five minutes.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Three normal adults, who considered their eating habits socially unacceptable, were trained in the family home to eat at normal pace by gradually increasing their meal duration. Additional food, descriptive praise, and self-approval were made contingent upon a step-wise increasing criterion of meal duration. During maintenance, the additional food component was withdrawn. A multiple baseline experimental analysis showed that the treatment package was successful in decreasing rapid eating to normal rates, as measured by the subjects' self-monitoring of their meal durations. In addition, the increased durations were maintained when the food component was withdrawn from the treatment package in a subsequent phase.
Behavior modification, 1985 · doi:10.1177/01454455850091008