Overcorrection Treatment of Stereotyped Behaviors

The efforts of an overcorrection treatment program for stereotyped responses by chronic psychiatric patients were assessed. Treatment in both studies involved the contingent use of "hand overcorrection" procedure, in which the subject was required to hold his hands in specified positions for 15 seconds each for a total of 5 minutes. In Study 1, wall-patting was reduced across three settings within a combined multiple-baseline reversal design. Collateral measures showed increased appropriate social responding (smiling and verbal comments) concurrent with treatment. In Study 2, contingent overcorrection eliminated stereotyped responses by three subjects who had topographically similar response patterns. Major findings of these studies were: (I) overcorrection effectively reduced stereotyed behaviors; (2) reduction of target behaviors did not generalize across settings and had to be programmed; (3) modeling effects were negligible for reduction of these behaviors; (4) the trainer became a discriminative stimulus for the overcorrection contingency; (5) maintenance of response reduction was accomplished by fading the trainer out of the treatment setting: and (6) positive side-effects were observed concurrent with treatment, but were not maintained as the target decreased in frequency.