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. 1974 Winter;7(4):521–528. doi: 10.1901/jaba.1974.7-521

Increasing spontaneous play by suppressing self-stimulation in autistic children1

Robert L Koegel 1, Paula B Firestone 1, Kenneth W Kramme 1, Glen Dunlap 1,2
PMCID: PMC1311666  PMID: 4443320

Abstract

Appropriate play with toys was studied in two autistic children with high occurrences of self-stimulatory behavior. Each child participated in the experimental sessions in an A-B-A design, where “A” refers to baseline sessions and “B” refers to self-stimulation suppression sessions. It was found that: (a) during the baseline sessions, the children exhibited low levels of play and high levels of self-stimulatory behavior; (b) the per cent of unreinforced, spontaneous, appropriate play increased when self-stimulatory behavior was suppressed; and (c) when the suppression of self-stimulation was discontinued, the per cent of self-stimulation and that of appropriate play approached their presuppression levels. These results seem particularly significant because they identify a set of conditions under which spontaneous appropriate behavior, uncommon in autistic children, occurs at an increased level.

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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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