Reducing vocal stereotypy in a child with autism through Response Interruption and Redirection
Fabiola Casarini, Rachele Cascavilla, Vanessa Artoni
We studied the effects of a Response Interruption and Redirection (RIRD) procedure to reduce the emission of vocal stereotypies and increase appropriate vocalizations in a child with autism. A 6-year old child, diagnosed with autism and attending his last year of nursery school, participated in the study. The child presented a repertoire of listening and discrimination skills and emerging vocal language, reading, and writing skills (Greer & Ross, 2008). He also presented high levels of vocal stereotypy, which consisted in repeating incomprehensible sounds and singing repeatedly and out of context. Before the study, functional analysis demonstrated the self-stimulatory function of the participant’s vocal stereotypy. A single subject ABA design with treatment withdrawal was used for the study. The dependent variable consisted in the duration of vocal stereotypy and the number of appropriate vocalizations emitted by the participant. The independent variable was the presentation of vocal and listening requests each time vocal stereotypy occurred. Results show that the procedure used was effective in reducing vocal stereotypies and increasing the participant’s emission of appropriate language.
Keywords
Stereotypies, Language, Autism, Vocal and motor requests, RIRD.