The early development of self-injurious behaviour: evaluating the role of social reinforcement.
Caregiver attention right after early self-injury fuels faster growth of the behavior, so rearrange that first response immediately.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Hatton et al. (2005) watched young children with intellectual disability for two years. They tracked how caregivers reacted the first time a child hit or bit himself.
Every time a parent gave comfort, hugs, or even a scolding look right after the act, the team wrote it down. They wanted to see if that social reply made the self-injury grow faster.
What they found
Kids whose parents reliably gave social contact after early self-injury showed the steepest rise in hits, bites, and head bangs over the next two years.
In simple words, attention acted like fertilizer. The more the adults gave, the faster the behavior spread.
How this fits with other research
Putnam et al. (2003) had already shown that brief functional analyses can spot social reinforcers in toddlers. Hatton et al. (2005) moved one step further by proving, in real time, that caregiver attention truly speeds the problem up.
Rasmussen et al. (2006) later flipped the coin in a classroom: fixed-time teacher attention prevented verbal outbursts. Together these studies show attention can either feed or calm problem behavior, depending on when and how it is delivered.
Kocher et al. (2015) extends the story by showing not all self-injury is social. Some is automatically reinforced. Still, Hatton et al. (2005) warns us to rule out social sources first, because early interaction patterns can snowball fast.
Why it matters
If you assess a toddler or preschooler who just started hitting herself, do not wait. Teach caregivers to redirect without eye contact, comfort, or chatter right after the act. Pair this with heavy reinforcement of safe play and communication instead. Early reshaping of those first social contingencies can stop self-injury from taking root and spare years of escalation.
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Join Free →During your next observation, chart what adults do within five seconds after each self-hit; then train them to withhold eye contact and vocal comments and instead deliver attention for safe play.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: The potential role of social reinforcement in the development of self-injury has not yet been subjected to empirical analysis. In this 2-year prospective study, the pattern of social interactions related to the early presentation of self-injury were examined to identify a potential association with an increase in self-injury. METHODS: The self-injurious behaviour and social contact with adults of 16 children with intellectual disability (ID) with self-injury of recent onset were observed at 3-month intervals over 2 years. RESULTS: Increase in self-injury over a 2-year period was positively correlated with a distribution of social contact relative to episodes of self-injury that is consistent with a mutual social reinforcement paradigm. When this paradigm was operative, self-injury was evoked under stable antecedent conditions over time but tended to evoke increasing levels of social interaction. CONCLUSIONS: These results support the hypothesis that increases in the frequency of early self-injury in children with ID may be determined by social reinforcement with implications for early intervention and proactive identification of children at risk for increases in self-injury.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2005 · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2005.00694.x