Decreasing Number of Food Portions Consumed by an Adolescent Female with Autism

One teen girl with autism ate too much at meals. The team gave her three tools: a behavior contract, a five-minute lesson on picking portions, and a small food diary.

She signed the contract to stay under her portion goal. Before each meal she circled the foods she planned to eat. After the meal she wrote how many portions she actually took.

The girl cut her portions from about eight per meal to four. The lower numbers stayed the same even when new foods were served.

Mom and dad rated the plan as highly acceptable. They liked that their daughter did the work herself.

Esposito et al. (2024) also packaged ABA parts for daily self-care. They added parents and video clips to teach tooth-brushing. Both studies show brief combos can work without long clinic hours.

Barnhill et al. (2020) tried a special diet for feeding issues in autism. They changed the food itself, not the child’s choices. GA et al. kept normal foods and taught portion awareness, so the two papers solve the same problem from opposite angles.

Perez et al. (2020) extended a simple toilet-training set to eleven kids. GA et al. did the same for feeding: one teen first, but the pieces are ready for more kids.

You can copy the trio tomorrow: write a short contract, show what one portion looks like, and hand the client a tiny diary. No extra staff, no kitchen changes. The teen in the study owned the plan, so you get built-in generalization and parent buy-in.