Intellectual disability (ID) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments in cognitive and adaptive functioning in social, practical, or conceptual domains. Individuals with ID present with higher-order repetitive behaviors such as a need for sameness, ritualistic, and compulsive behaviors.Often referred to as obsessive compulsive behaviors (OCBs), these behaviors increase in prevalence between 2 and 5 years of age. The present study evaluated an exposure-based behavioral intervention for decreasing OCBs and concomitantly increasing play skills in a 4-year-old boy with mild ID in an inclusive preschool setting. Using a multiple baseline across behaviors design, the intervention was associated with a decrease in target behaviors and an increase in the duration of peer social engagement, with results maintained at 3-week follow-up.The intervention consisted of exposure and response prevention with function-based components. Procedures including prompting and reinforcement were generalized to parent and teacher mediators. This study provides preliminary support for the use of an exposure-based behavioral intervention to treat OCBs in children of preschool age with ID. KEYWORDS exposure and response prevention, functional behavioral assessment, intellectual disability, obsessive compulsive behavior, school-based interventionThe researchers would like to thank the participating preschool, teachers, and family for their contribution to the project. This research was supported by a graduate fellowship and Match of Minds scholarship from Brock University.

Little consensus exists on whether repetitive behaviors that are topographically similar in obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are indicative of a comorbid diagnosis of OCD or overlapping symptoms subsumed under ASD. This ambiguity in the cause and/or function of the behavior often results in challenges for clinicians regarding conceptualization, assessment, and treatment of repetitive behavior, especially given the challenges young children and children with ASD may have with articulating thoughts, obsessions, or functions of behavior. To address this issue, this article proposes an approach that refrains from providing a comorbid diagnosis in most cases, instead focusing on overlapping symptom presentation. We present a conceptual framework for the often-complex role that behavioral function(s) of repetitive behavior serve for an individual based in Mowrer’s (1951) two-process theory. A second conceptual framework considers the presentation of obsessive–compulsive behaviors based in relational frame theory (Hayes, 1991). Clinical case examples illustrate the varied influence of respondent and operant learning and relational framing on repetitive behaviors in ASD. Methods of functional behavioral assessment are described, and recommendations for addressing function(s) in treatment based in applied behavior analysis, cognitive behavior therapy, and acceptance and commitment training are provided. Limitations and future directions for function-based treatment of obsessive–compulsive behaviors in persons with ASD are discussed in the context of the conceptual frameworks.

Objectives Previously, we found that maximum ingested bite size (Vb), the largest piece of food an animal can consume without biting it into smaller pieces first, isometrically scales relative to body size in strepsirrhines and with negative allometry in anthropoids. In the current study, we rectify the omission of great apes from the earlier sample to now characterize the Vb of the entire size‐range of the order. Materials and Methods Five gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla—G. g. gorilla) were studied to ascertain Vb in relation to the mechanical properties of five foods. Results Gorilla Vb ranged from 166.38 cm3 (for the least obdurate food: watermelon) to 8 cm3 (for the most obdurate food: turnip), with an average Vb of 33.50 cm3 across all food types. Conclusions When these data were compared to those from our previous studies, we found that gorillas consumed relatively slightly smaller volumes of food compared to the trend found across primates. However, because the more frugivorous gorillas consumed relatively larger pieces of food than the large folivorous monkeys previously studied, including the gorilla data increased the slope of the linear regression between body mass and Vb in anthropoids. Thus, the addition of the largest living primate brings the anthropoid Vb trend closer to the Vb trend of the order. Notwithstanding, there is still negative allometry in anthropoid Vb, in contrast with the isometry in strepsirrhine Vb. Future research should include species with body masses between the smaller anthropoids and gorillas by studying the Vb of large papionids and the other great apes.

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