Compliance and Resistance in the Conditioning of Autistic Children: An Exploratory Study

Task Difficulty and Task Performance in Autistic Children

“…However, the one child who reacted to the Standard Progressive Matrices by initially giving an incorrect response on nearly every trial provided an interesting instance of classically negativistic behaviour. An earlier Study into the meaning of this sort of behaviour (Clark and Rutter, 1977) had failed to elicit any negativism in a similar sample of autistic children, despite other reports of its high rate of occurrence in the less able children with little or no language (Cowan et al, 1965). Interestingly, the child who was behaving in this contrary fashion in the present study was highly verbal, and his I.Q_.…”

“…After getting the first 5 items of scale A correct, 54 of the subsequent 55 items elicited an incorrect response. As at least scales A and B were demonstrably within his ability on a previous testing, it appeared that this child was behaving in a manner that could be described as "negativistic" (see Cowan et al, 1965;Clark and Rutter, 1977) and was "deliberately" supplying the incorrect response. To explore this more fully, the SPM was immediately readministered, yielding only 4 correct responses out of a possible 60.…”

Modeling: Research with Implications for Special Education

“…Patterson (1969) suggested that certain model attributes-adult status, for instance-might result in a deviant child's doing the opposite of the model or copying only in the model's absence. This negative set has been noted particularly in severely disturbed children (Cowan, Hoddinott, & Wright, 1965;Hartung, 1970;Lovaas, 1968;Marshall & Hegrenes, 1970), but not exclusively so (Patterson, Hawkins, McNeal, & Phelps, 1967). …”

Compliance, ‘Negativism’, and the Effects of Treatment Structure in Autism: A Naturalistic, Behavioral Study

“…Some investigators have studied social behaviors, e.g. avoidance of eye contact (Hutt & Ounsted, 1966), while others have studied children's performance on specific cognitive tasks and in specific situations (Clark & Rutter, 1977;Cowan, Hoddinott & Wright, 1965). Negativism has either been rather broadly or quite specifically defined (Morrison, Miller & Mejia, 1971;Sroufe, Stuecher & Stutzer, 1973) or studies have focused on the typology of behaviors exhibited by the child (Clark & Rutter, 1977;Sroufe ^/a/., 1973;Wallace, 1975).…”