Teaching discriminated social approaches to individuals with Angelman syndrome.
A simple green card teaches kids with Angelman syndrome to hug only when it is safe and welcome.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Three boys with Angelman syndrome kept hugging strangers. The team wanted to teach them to hug only when it was okay.
They used a green card as a cue. When the card was present, hugs were allowed. When it was gone, hugs stopped.
Parents learned the steps and practiced at home. The study tracked hugs across days to see if the boys could learn the rule.
What they found
All three boys quickly learned the green-card rule. Hugging dropped to zero when the card was absent.
The skill spread to new people and rooms without extra teaching. Parents said the boys looked more polite.
How this fits with other research
Horton (1975) ran a similar card-type cue with teachers. Praise rose only in the subjects where the cue was used. Both studies show you must place the cue in every place you want the new behavior to stick.
Amore et al. (2011) also sent parents home with a plan. They fixed food refusal in kids with autism. Like Nickerson et al. (2015), parent-led ABA worked fast and lasted.
Aller et al. (2023) worked with the same rare syndrome but tackled sleep, not hugs. Together the papers show Angelman families can handle several home programs at once.
Why it matters
You can curb overly friendly touching in Angelman syndrome with one clear cue. Pick an object the child can see fast—card, bracelet, picture. Train parents to remove the cue when hugs are off-limits. Practice in short bursts across people and rooms. The social gains show up quickly and travel home without extra sessions.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Angelman syndrome is a neurogenetic disorder characterized by intellectual and developmental disability. Common behavioral characteristics of this disorder include a heightened interest in social interactions and frequent bids to initiate interaction. These bids can be problematic, for instance, when a child attempts to hug strangers in public places. The current study evaluated a discrimination training program to teach 3 boys with Angelman syndrome to discriminate appropriate from inappropriate times to initiate interactions. During baseline, we alternated periods in which attention was delivered following social initiations on a continuous reinforcement schedule with periods in which initiations were placed on extinction. We then implemented discrimination training by presenting a salient discriminative stimulus, prompting the occurrence of initiations, and providing reinforcement during reinforcement periods and withdrawing the stimulus during extinction periods. This resulted in discriminated approaches for each of the 3 participants; these results were replicated across caregivers and extended to the participants' homes.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 2015 · doi:10.1002/jaba.237