Food satiation as a procedure to decelerate vomiting.

A food satiation procedure was used in two experiments to decelerate the frequency of vomiting responses in two profoundly retarded adults who exhibited well-defined vomiting-ruminatory response chains. For several years prior to this study, the subjects had exhibited a history of vomiting behavior. Satiation was accomplished during regular meals and consisted of allowing the subjects to eat until a satiation criterion of food refusal was achieved. The results revealed a 94 percent reduction of vomiting in Experiment 1 and a 50 percent response reduction in Experiment 2. Ten-day follow-up sessions indicated that the response reduction was maintained in both experiments. In Experiment 1 the subject exhibited a 4.99 kg weight gain at the 10-day follow-up with a total of 13.61 kg weight gain at a 4-week posttreatment weight check.