Sequential evaluation of reinforced compliance and graduated request delivery for the treatment of noncompliance in children with developmental disabilities.

Errorless compliance training is a recently developed approach that has been demonstrated to be effective in treating severe oppositional behavior in children. In conjunction with several ancillary techniques, the approach comprises two fundamental components: reinforcement for child compliance and delivery of requests in a four-level hierarchy, from requests that yield high levels of compliance to those that yield low levels. To determine the relative contribution of each component, four children with developmental disabilities and severe oppositional behavior were observationally assessed in baseline and then treated using reinforcement following each instance of compliance to parental requests. Following this first treatment phase, we used the graduated request hierarchy in conjunction with reinforced compliance. Results indicated that use of reinforcement for compliance in isolation was ineffective in bringing about clinically significant improvements in child compliance. The addition of the graduated request hierarchy appeared to be associated with substantial changes in child compliance that maintained in follow-up assessments.