The Contributions of Eye Contact and Contingent Praise to Effective Instruction Delivery in Compliance Training

The present study, using a multiple baseline across subjects design for two children and a nonconcurrent multiple baseline across subjects design for two additional children, evaluated whether the addition of eye contact and then contingent praise for compliance (CP) would lead to increases in childhood compliance for both statement and question form instructions. Participants were four children from a university-based school psychology clinic who had percentages of compliance to first-time parental presented instructions of 40% or less. The use of instruction delivery procedures without demanded eye contact resulted in compliance increases above baseline levels for all four participants. Additionally, when eye contact was added to the instruction delivery procedures and CP was added to all previous procedures, further compliance increases were observed for all four participants regardless of instructional phrasing (i.e., statement or question form). Results are discussed in terms of the importance of specific instruction delivery components in achieving childhood compliance.