Evaluation of Practice Trials to Increase Self-Drinking in a Child with a Feeding Disorder

Self-drinking is an important skill for children to acquire as they transition from infancy to early childhood; however, the literature is limited (e.g., Collins, Gast, Wolery, Holcombe, & Leatherby, 1991; Peterson, Volkert, & Zeleny, 2015). We manipulated the consequences associated with self-drinking relative to those associated with being fed along the dimension of response effort. Results demonstrated that self-drinking increased when the child could either choose to self-feed one drink or be fed one drink and 5 practice trials with an empty cup.