The effects of noncontingent music and response interruption and redirection on vocal stereotypy
Background music plus light RIRD cuts vocal stereotypy quicker and with fewer interruptions than RIRD alone.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Two boys with autism kept making loud word sounds during work time.
The team tried three things: only music, only RIRD, or both together.
They switched the order each day so they could see which mix worked best.
They counted how often the boys made the sounds and how much they stayed on task.
What they found
When music played in the background, the boys made fewer loud sounds right away.
They also needed fewer RIRD prompts—about half as many.
Work time went up and stereotypy went down faster than with RIRD alone.
How this fits with other research
Rojahn et al. (2012) showed that high-preference songs beat low-preference songs. Gibbs et al. (2018) kept that idea and simply added the songs to RIRD.
Cividini-Motta et al. (2019) tried RIRD plus DRA and saw okay stereotypy drops but no jump in good responses. Music plus RIRD in Gibbs gives the same stereotypy drop with fewer prompts and no extra DRA steps.
Laugeson et al. (2014) warned that only counting after you interrupt can make RIRD look better than it is. Gibbs used whole-session counts, so their big drop is likely real.
Why it matters
You can get faster calm with less effort. Pick songs the child already likes, play them non-stop during work, and run RIRD only when needed. You will interrupt less, the child stays engaged, and stereotypy still falls. Try it next time vocal stereotypy steals learning time.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Vocal stereotypy is a commonly occurring challenging behavior in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that is frequently maintained by automatic reinforcement and often interferes with skill acquisition. Matched stimulation (MS), and response interruption and redirection (RIRD) are two interventions that have been demonstrated to be effective in reducing the occurrence of vocal stereotypy with participants with ASD. The current study sought to determine if the combination of MS (noncontingent music) and RIRD was more effective at reducing vocal stereotypy than RIRD alone and if the parents of children with ASD found the combination of MS and RIRD more socially valid than RIRD alone. The results suggested that the combined intervention resulted in greater suppression of vocal stereotypy and increased occurrences of on-task behavior in both participants. Additionally, RIRD required fewer implementations and had a shorter duration when combined with MS. Results suggest that the combination of MS and RIRD may be an effective intervention outside of highly controlled settings.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2018 · doi:10.1002/jaba.485