Feasibility of exposure response prevention to treat repetitive behaviors of children with autism and an intellectual disability: a brief report.

Five kids with autism and intellectual disability got a therapy called exposure response prevention. The team blocked each child’s favorite repetitive action for short periods. They watched if the kids could stay calm without the behavior.

Sessions happened where the kids already spent time, like home or school. No one left the room or lost tokens. The goal was simply to see if the method felt doable for this group.

Every child let the therapist block the behavior at least once. Most stayed calm and moved on to toys or snacks. Staff said the steps were easy to run and no one got hurt.

Because all five showed quick drops in the repeated action, the team called the plan both safe and worth testing again.

Harrop (2015) looked at 29 parent-training studies and found almost none aimed at repetitive behaviors. Fahmie et al. (2013) fills that gap by showing one way to target the behaviors directly.

Matson et al. (2008) also cut motor stereotypy, but they used social-skills teaching plus self-monitoring. Both studies got good results, so you now have two roads: teach social play or use brief exposure blocks.

Jones et al. (2010) and Barton et al. (2019) show that kids who are extra sensitive to sounds or textures tend to show more repetitive movements. Pairing sensory-friendly steps with exposure blocks might boost the effect.

If you serve kids with both autism and ID, you know stereotypy can eat up learning time. This paper gives you a low-cost tool you can try tomorrow: block the behavior for seconds, deliver praise and toys, then release. Track the data for ten trials. If it works, you just added another option beyond redirection or DRO.