Motivating children with autism to ride a stationary recumbent bicycle using contingent and delayed reinforcement

There are an increasing number of individuals being diagnosed with autism. The CDC reports that 1 in every 110 children has been diagnosed with some form of autism. With this increase, there are more and more children with autism participating in general physical education classes. Furthermore, research has indicated that children with autism are as likely to become obese as children who do not have autism. The purpose of this study was to see if children with autism would pedal a stationary recumbent bicycle for a greater duration of time using contingent reinforcement versus delayed reinforcement. Nine students from the Carmen B. Pingree Center for Children with Autism were recruited for this study. They were randomly selected to the order of treatment either contingent reinforcement or delayed reinforcement. In the contingent reinforcement phase, when the participant pedaled in his/her target heart rate zone (THRZ), the television would turn on and would remain on as long as they stayed in their THRZ. In a delayed reinforcement phase, the participant was told they could watch television after they pedaled in their THRZ. The split-middle technique was used to analyze and compare trends in and across both the contingent reinforcement phase and delayed reinforcement phase. Results indicated that there was a positive trend to increase pedal duration during the contingent phase in 7 of the 9 participants compared to only 2 of the 9 showing a positive trend to increase pedal duration during the delayed reinforcement phase. This indicated that the 7 participants would increase their physical activity by pedaling for a longer time over the duration of the contingent phase compared to only 2 participants increasing their pedal duration in the delayed reinforcement phase. Differences between the contingent reinforcement phase and the delayed reinforcement phase were found to be statistically significant in 7 of the 9 participants. In addition, the total time pedaled was higher in the contingent reinforcement phase compared to the delayed reinforcement phase with 8 of the 9 participants. The overall findings indicated that contingent reinforcement showed a trend to increase pedal time in their THRZ compared to the trend of pedaling in their THRZ in the delayed reinforcement phase.