Errorless Academic Compliance Training: Improving Generalized Cooperation With Parental Requests in Children With Autism

Abstract

Children with autism often demonstrate distress and oppositionality when exposed to requests to complete academic or household tasks. Errorless academic compliance training is a success-focused, noncoercive intervention for improving child cooperation with such activities. In the present study, the authors evaluated treatment and generalization effects of this intervention on four children diagnosed with autism. In a multiple baseline across-subjects design, parents delivered a range of academic and nonacademic requests to their children to determine the probability of compliance for each request. A hierarchy of academic requests ranging from those yielding high compliance (level 1) to those yielding low compliance (level 4) was then developed. Treatment began with the concentrated delivery of level 1 requests, with praise and reward for compliant responses. Over several weeks, children were gradually introduced to requests from subsequent probability levels with continued reward for compliance. High compliance levels were demonstrated throughout and following treatment. Evidence of generalization to untrained academic requests and nonacademic requests emerged. Treatment gains were maintained up to 6 months after treatment. Errorless academic compliance training appears to be an effective intervention for enhancing generalized compliance in children with autism.