The Effects and Side-effects of an Overcorrection Procedure Applied by Parents of Severely Emotionally Disturbed Children in a Home Environment

Abstract

This study investigated the effects and side-effects of overcorrection procedures applied by teachers and parents to treat the self-stimulatory behavior of two autistic-like elementary school age children. The experimental design consisted of four conditions during which observations of the subjects were collected in the home settings. Following a baseline period, overcorrection was differentially implemented (1) in a public school classroom by a teacher, (2) in the home settings by the parents, and (3) in both environments simultaneously. This strategy permitted the examination of the effects of treatment on the target behaviors across environments. Additionally, the study was designed to determine if overcorrection treatment of self-stimulatory behavior would lead to desirable side-effects. For this purpose, proximity-to-others, and playing appropriately were identified as positive behavioral correlates for both subjects. Three different self-stimulatory behaviors were identified for each subject as negative behavioral correlates. The results showed that in each setting, overcorrection procedures were associated with statistically significant differences in the target behaviors. Across the various treatment settings, only one adaptive behavior, proximity, for one subject, was shown to be significantly different. However, two-thirds of the untreated self-stimulatory behaviors changed in desirable and significant directions. It was also noted that the lowest levels of the target behaviors were attained when the overcorrection procedures were applied simultaneously in both school and home environments.