The effects of high-p and low-p instruction similarity on compliance among young children

Abstract

The high-probability (high-p) instructional sequence involves the delivery of a series of high-probability instructions immediately before delivery of a low-probability or target instruction. It has been shown to be efficacious for treating noncompliance among children and individuals with intellectual disabilities. Previous research (Esch & Fryling, ) has suggested that matching the topography of the response required to comply with high-p instructions with the topography of the response required to comply with the low-p instruction in the sequence may lead to greater increases in compliance with the low-p instruction. In this study, we compared high-p instructions that required both similar and dissimilar responses to two topographies of low-p instructions (motor and vocal) among two young children. Results suggested that the topography of the response required by the high-p instructions did not affect levels of compliance with low-p instructions for either participant. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.

Keywords: compliance; high-p instructional sequence; noncompliance.