Treating Youths With Selective Mutism With an Alternating Design of Exposure-Based Practice and Contingency Management
Section snippets
Participants
Nine children aged 4 to 9 years and their parents voluntarily participated in this study. Children were mostly female (7), had a mean age of 6.6 years (SD = 1.9), and were European-American (4), biracial (2), Asian-American (2), or Hispanic (1). Most families (7) had two parents, and mean annual family income was $67,889. Participants were recruited from public and private schools (7), a preschool (1), and from a general press release to the community (1). All children met diagnostic criteria
Interrater Reliability of Interview and Daily Measures
An additional graduate student attended 67% of ADIS-C/P interviews, and 100% interrater diagnostic agreement was obtained. Regarding daily measures, interrater reliability for ratings of number of words spoken was initially calculated across all three data sources: children, parents, and teachers. Interrater reliability was .86. Interrater reliability for daily ratings of number of words spoken was also calculated for only children and parents: .92. Child and parent ratings of child anxiety and
Discussion
This study is one of the first to employ systematic assessment and treatment procedures in a controlled investigation of outcome utilizing exposure-based practices and contingency management for selective mutism. Results indicated that both treatment approaches may be effective for increasing audible speech in this population, though exposure-based practices may be significantly more effective. Results of the study match those of several previously published case reports, but do so in more
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