Evaluating the separate and combined effects of enriched environment and punishment for self‐injury in school

Abstract

We conducted a systematic replication of Thompson et al. (1999) for decreasing the emission of hand-mouthing for a boy with severe intellectual disability in a school setting. We evaluated the separate and combined effects of enriched environment and punishment in a multi-element comparison design. We also evaluated the effects of punishment on object manipulation and the number of interactions with peers. Results showed that the highest SIB suppression level occurred under the combined effects of the enriched environment and punishment. Punisher delivery did not reduce object manipulation. The number of interactions increased throughout the phases of the study.