Response Interruption and Redirection (RIRD) as a Behavioral Intervention for Vocal Stereotypy: A Systematic Review

Response interruption and redirection (RIRD) is an intervention that involves presenting demands or other types of distracters to interrupt an interfering behavior and redirect it to a more appropriate response. It targets the decrease of repetitive, stereotypic, and self-injurious behaviors. Research indicates that stereotypy is commonly maintained by automatic reinforcement (Rapp & Vollmer, 2005). Ahearn, Clark, MacDonald, and Chung (2007) were the first to evaluate the use of RIRD as a behavioral intervention for vocal stereotypy. Due to the success of RIRD as being the one behavioral intervention that not only decreases vocal stereotypy but may increases engagement in appropriate vocalizations the authors chose to examine additional studies that have used RIRD to address vocal stereotypy in children with autism in order to see if the replication and expansion of RIRD has continued to produce support for this intervention. Ten single-subject design studies were identified between 2000 and 2016. With such a limited number of studies, all showing positive results, future research should focus on replicating and expanding RIRD as a behavioral intervention to address vocal stereotypy in children with autism.