Results Using the MotivAider - Project 4

We thank Trina Spencer from the Hawthorne Country School, Hawthorne, New York for offering to share these results with other educators. [e-mail Trina].

Prepared by Trina D. Spencer, MS, BCBA
ABA 2002 Poster Presentation
Hawthorne Country Day School
Hawthorne, New York

Project 4 - MotivAider Prompts Parents

Parents often complain about their special child tantrumming for their attention. Many of these children are not able to go 20 minutes without interacting with a parent and given a state of deprivation a fierce tantrum ensues. After teaching a parent the value of using attention to manage behavior and planned ignoring, the parent was still not able to prevent the attention-maintained tantrums.

The MotivAider was then utilized to systematically prompt the parent to attend to the child before the tantrums begin. Fixed intervals began at 30 seconds and increased to 5 minutes over a period of one month. The parent started the MotivAider when the child came home from school. Preferred materials were available at the kitchen table for the child and the parent began her evening chores of cooking, cleaning, and talking with other family members. Whenever the MotivAider vibrated, she walked over to her child and praised her for engaging in the materials and staying at the table. After a few seconds of positive interaction, the parent returned to her chores. At the next vibrating prompt, the parent went back to interacting with her child.

The procedures were extremely effective in preventing almost all attention-maintained tantrums and were quickly generalized to public settings.