Treating excessively slow responding of a young man with Asperger syndrome using differential reinforcement of short response latencies.

Jeffrey H. Tiger, Kelly J. Bouxsein, & Wayne W. Fisher (2007). Treating excessively slow responding of a young man with Asperger syndrome using differential reinforcement of short response latencies. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 40, 559-563.

Fjellstedt and Sulzer-Azaroff (1973) used differential reinforcement of short latencies to decrease a child’s latency to comply with instructions. We replicated this contingency with a young man diagnosed with Asperger syndrome across two tasks (question answering and math problem solving). We added a differential reinforcement contingency to teach the participant to discriminate between math problems that could be answered rapidly and those that required more time for accurate performance.

DESCRIPTORS: Asperger syndrome, differential reinforcement of short latencies, slow responding