The Effect of Warnings to Timeout on Child Compliance to Parental Instructions

ABSTRACT

One common component of behavioral parent training packages is the use of a warning prior to implementation of a timeout following noncompliance to parental instructions. The primary purpose of this research was to evaluate the effects of warnings on compliance. An alternating treatments design was used to evaluate compliance to warned versus unwarned timeouts with three typically developing children. All participants showed a significant increase in compliance upon implementation of the timeout package, either with or without a warning. However, compliance decreased over time in the Warning condition for two participants and increased in variability for a third. All participants had more timeouts in the No Warning condition. Results also showed preliminary evidence for parental preference of Warned timeouts. Implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Noncompliance
• timeout
• warnings

Acknowledgment

This research was conducted as partial fulfillment of the first author’s PhD degree at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.