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. 1994 Winter;27(4):639–647. doi: 10.1901/jaba.1994.27-639

Behavioral momentum and stimulus fading in the acquisition and maintenance of child compliance in the home

Joseph M Ducharme 1,2,3, David E Worling 1,2,3
PMCID: PMC1297849  PMID: 16795842

Abstract

The provision of a series of requests to which compliance is highly likely (high-probability requests) immediately antecedent to low-probability requests has been used to establish behavioral momentum of compliance. We evaluated a fading procedure for maintaining high levels of compliance obtained with high-probability requests. Fading involved a systematic reduction in the number of high-probability requests and an increase in the latency between the high- and low-probability requests. High levels of compliance for both “do” and “don't” requests were maintained for 16 weeks in a 5-year-old boy with developmental disabilities after the high-probability request sequence was faded. Similar maintenance was obtained for “do” requests in a 15-year-old girl with developmental disabilities. For this subject, however, the high-probability request sequence was ineffective with “don't” requests. When “don't” requests were phrased as “do” requests, the high-probability request sequence produced high levels of compliance to the low-probability request. High levels of compliance to these “do” requests were maintained for 16 weeks after the high-probability request sequence was faded.

Keywords: behavioral momentum, stimulus fading, noncompliance, high-probability request sequence

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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