Teaching toilet training skills to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can be challenging. Many techniques use Azrin and Foxx's Rapid Toilet Training method (RTT). However, some children with ASD find the first RTT step of entering the bathroom or restroom to be challenging due to the relatively loud sound of the toilet flushing. Although…

Background: Needle phobias are common in children and adults worldwide. One effective intervention for this phobia is exposure therapy where a participant is gradually exposed to increasing levels of the fear-evoking stimulus while differential reinforcement is applied. This intervention, however, may be difficult to implement with some medical…

Background: Fear of medical procedures in general and needles in particular can be a difficult clinical challenge to providing effective health care for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Methods: A changing criterion design was used to examine graduated exposure treatment for blood-injury-injection phobia in an adult…

Specific phobias are among the most common anxiety disorders, especially in children. Unfortunately, a paucity of literature exists regarding the treatment of specific phobia in young children, despite the knowledge that traditional techniques (i.e., cognitive-behavioral therapy [CBT]) may not be practical. Therefore, the purpose of this article…

This case report concerns a woman with intellectual disability, schizoaffective disorder, and avoidance and refusal of having her blood drawn. She required but refused blood draws to properly monitor the therapeutic dose of a necessary psychotropic medication. During intervention at a community-based habilitation setting and under simulated…

Traditional methods of diagnosis are of little therapeutic use when diagnostic criteria are based upon topographical rather than functional aspects of behavior. Also, this sentence in the original seemed rather awkward and a bit unclear. In contrast to this, several authors have put forward experience avoidance disorders as an alternative which…

One-session treatment (OST), a variant of cognitive-behavioral therapy, combines graduated in vivo exposure, participant modeling, reinforcement, psychoeducation, cognitive challenges, and skills training in an intensive treatment model. Treatment is maximized to one 3-hour session. In this paper, we review the application of OST for specific…

One-Session Treatment (OST) is a form of massed exposure therapy for the treatment of specific phobias. OST combines exposure, participant modeling, cognitive challenges, and reinforcement in a single session, maximized to three hours. Clients are gradually exposed to steps of their fear hierarchy using therapist-directed behavioral experiments.…

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have a high prevalence of specific fears, including fear of general medical procedures, but research on the treatment of medical fears has been limited. Two studies are described in this article. The first study involved an assessment of the prevalence of fears associated with physical exams.…

Research supported in part by Grant MH-13651-01 from the National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Public Health Service.

A manual to teach parents how to help their six children (3-11 years old) overcome fear of the dark included desensitization, reinforcemnt, and verbal self-control statements. Data indicated that all children were sleeping all night with the rheostat set at criterion level or lower within two weeks after initiation of treatment. (Author/CL)

Investigated the active components of covert positive reinforcement that consisted of an S-R modality, a reinforcement procedure, and a demand for expectancy of success. Results of the behavioral avoidance test indicated that subjects in the overt S-R modality groups approached closer to the rat. (Author)

This study of the outcomes of treatment of three children with autism, to reduce fear of dental examinations, found that the children could be trained through a combined desensitization, symbolic modeling, and reinforcement treatment package to undergo a dental exam in an analog setting, and the training could generalize somewhat to a clinical…