A study of cognitive process and mediated compliance training, educational and clinical implications in the treatment of non-compliance for children with developmental disabilities

grantor: University of TorontoNon-compliance is a commonly observed behavioral problem among children, and especially among those with developmental disabilities. In contrast to traditional views of behavior therapy, in which little attention was paid to the cognitive process underlying the child's behavior, the author assumed that non-compliant behavior among children with developmental disabilities would be improved by facilitating their cognitive processes. This can be achieved through Mediated Compliance Training (MCT) in which additional cognitive information is progressively introduced with parental requests and presented to the children so as to help them better understand these requests and therefore behave more appropriately. Eight developmentally disabled children participated in three experiments in this study to test these hypotheses. Initially, trials were conducted to determine the participants' compliance to parental requests, and a set of Original Requests with low-probabilities (below 20% of compliance) were thus obtained for each child. These requests were then progressively modified by adding more cognitive information beginning with a lower level of cognitive information that concerned the features, locations or attribution of the objects (Level 1); and then including information about reasons or purposes for complying with the requests (Level 2), and finally extending to higher level of cognitive information that contained consequences of non-compliant behavior (Level 3). These three levels of cognitively enriched requests were presented to the children gradually and in sequence. It was observed that under MCT, without any punishment or remedial consequences involved, higher rates of compliance and fewer incidences of maladaptive behavior were obtained throughout both the treatment and follow-up sessions. The results show that cognitive information when added to the parental requests can facilitate a child's understanding of the task demands and thereby lead to better compliance and less maladaptive behavior. The educational significance and clinical implications of MCT are also discussed.Ph.D