Compliance training

Abstract

Compliance involves the extent to which a person behaves in accordance with the demands and expectations of their social environment. The issue of compliance is important to behavior analysis as failures to comply may produce detrimental effects on learning, health, social inclusion, and general well-being. This chapter aims to address this issue by reviewing behavior analytic practices in the assessment and treatment of compliance. Specifically, this chapter first reviews skill assessments, functional assessments, and preference assessments that should be typically conducted prior to the implementation of treatment. Next, a treatment section presents both antecedent-based and consequence-based interventions that contribute to improving compliance in different populations. Finally, this chapter ends by emphasizing the importance of rigorously selecting interventions and monitoring their effects to ensure that compliance training produces socially significant changes in the beneficiaries of behavior analytic services.