Behavioural Intervention of Compulsive Behaviours in Autism: A Case Study

Autism is syndrome primarily characterized by qualitative impairments in social skills, communication and restricted interests and repetitive behaviours. Sometimes the repetitive behaviours seen in this disorder overlap with obsessive and compulsive disorders. Behaviour modification techniques based on the principle of operant conditioning are known to be effective in case of stereotypic behaviours but there is no clear data whether the same is effective in case of compulsive behaviours in Autism. In this context the present study was designed to treat compulsive behaviours in a boy with autism through applied behavioural analysis.