TREATING EXCESSIVELY SLOW RESPONDING OF A YOUNG MAN WITH ASPERGER SYNDROME USING DIFFERENTIAL REINFORCEMENT OF SHORT RESPONSE LATENCIES

Abstract

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.