Parental ratings of treatments of self-injurious behavior.
Parents across diagnoses reject shock and embrace reinforcement for self-injury, but autism parents are pickier about mild punishments too.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Pickering et al. (1985) mailed a short survey to parents of kids with autism, other delays, and typical kids. They asked how acceptable different self-injury treatments felt: praise for good behavior, time-out, overcorrection, and mild electric shock.
Parents circled numbers on a five-point scale. The team compared answers across the three groups.
What they found
Every parent group liked differential reinforcement best and called shock unacceptable. Autism parents were stricter: they rated time-out and overcorrection as less okay than typical parents did.
In short, parents want gentle first-line tools, but their tolerance for mild punishments shifts with their child's diagnosis.
How this fits with other research
Thomas (1968) once showed shock quickly stopped life-threatening climbing in an autistic boy. Pickering et al. (1985) shows parents reject that same option. The gap is an apparent contradiction: what works in a single lab case feels morally wrong to families.
Bowker et al. (2011) later found parents quietly drop treatments they dislike when gains stall. Their real-world choices echo the 1985 acceptability ratings.
Bearss et al. (2013) proved parent training built on praise can still cut irritability by half, proving the preferred strategy is also effective.
Why it matters
When you write a behavior plan, parent buy-in predicts follow-through. Start with differential reinforcement because every parent group already likes it. If you must add time-out or overcorrection, explain why and check comfort first. Use the 1985 pattern as a quick script: 'Most families prefer praise-based plans; how does this feel to you?'
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Join Free →Open the next parent meeting by sharing the plan's reinforcement section first and asking, 'On a scale of 1-5, how acceptable does this feel?'
02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study examined (a) how parents of autistic children, parents of other handicapped children, and parents of nonhandicapped children rate, as a whole, acceptability of time-out, differential reinforcement, overcorrection, and shock as treatments for self-injurious behavior, and (b) whether these parents show differences, as groups, in ratings of these treatments. On the Treatment Evaluation Inventory, all groups consistently rated differential reinforcement, time-out, and overcorrection as acceptable and shock as unacceptable. Differential reinforcement was consistently rated as the most acceptable, but the groups differed in ratings of acceptability of other treatments. On the Semantic Differential, ratings of differential reinforcement, overcorrection, and time-out did not differ. However, shock was consistently rated as the most potent and active of treatments as well as the most unacceptable. The implications of these findings for treatment of autistic and other handicapped children are discussed.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 1985 · doi:10.1007/BF01531500