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A Review of Children’s Self-Injurious Behavior

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Abstract

Children who emit self-injurious behavior are rare but the counterintuitive nature of self-abuse and its obvious undesirability have generated much theoretical and applied interest. Self-abuse in nonhumans is regularly induced by chronic exposure to sympathomimetic agents, and commonly occurs in children suffering from physiological disorders such as the Lesch-Nyhan and de Lange syndromes, but most cases of human self-mutilation are not associated with specific physiological antecedents. Learning theorists speculate that much self-abuse is maintained as an operant response that serves to manipulate the child’s environment, although the behavior initially appears as an unlearned response to certain conditions. Many kinds of treatments have been used in attempts to control self-abuse, including physical restraints, drug administration, and various procedures involving reinforcement and punishment operations. The present paper critically discusses procedures used to manage self-abuse with respect to demonstrated efficacy, ease of implementation, and limitations. Direct comparisons between treatments are problematic, in part because literature in this area consists largely of single-case studies. However, punishment is surely one of the most effective techniques yet used to control self-abuse, yet legal and ethical considerations limit the use of this procedure to particularly severe and intractable cases, making selection of an appropriate initial treatment a difficult choice at best.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 49008, USA

    Mitchell Picker, Alan Poling & Alan Parker

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Picker, M., Poling, A. & Parker, A. A Review of Children’s Self-Injurious Behavior. Psychol Rec 29, 435–452 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03394634

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