Collateral Effects from Teaching Attention, Imitation and Toy Interaction Behaviors to a Developmentally Handicapped Child

Abstract

A 3 year 4 month old girl with developmental handicaps was initially taught attention and imitation on request and then, within a multiple baseline across behaviors design, responding to experimenter direction to manipulate eight toys. Training with sex of these toys was successfully taken over by preschool staff while interaction with three different toys was achieved with the child's mother at home. Across 23 weeks of the study 10 non-targeted behaviors were observed in the preschool dayroom setting, and showed that from the time the first intervention commenced the child markedly decreased self-stimulation and self-injury and substantially increased attending to persons and objects. These changes were seen as collateral effects of the intervention programme, and the importance of evaluating such effects suggested.