Brief Report: Compliance and Noncompliance to Parental Control Strategies in Children with High-Functioning Autism and Their Typical Peers

The present study examined children’s compliance and noncompliance behaviors in response to parental control strategies in 20 children with high-functioning autism (HFA) and 20 matched typically-developing children. Observational coding was used to measure child compliance (committed, situational), noncompliance (passive, defiance, self-assertion, negotiation) and parent control strategies (commands, reprimands, positive incentives, reasoning, bargaining) in a clean-up task. Sequential analyses were conducted to identify parent behaviors that temporally predicted child compliance or noncompliance. Children with HFA were significantly more noncompliant and less compliant immediately following parents’ indirect commands than typically-developing children, even after controlling for receptive language. These results add to the existing literature on the efficacy of control strategies for children with autism, and have important implications for caregiver interventions.