RELATIVE PREVALENCE AND RELATIONS AMONG STEREOTYPED AND SIMILAR BEHAVIORS

Relative prevalence and relations among stereotyped and similar behavi ors were studied in 246 children and adults with developmental disabil ities. For each subject, two staff members who knew the participant at least moderately well filled out a checklist of 54 items that sampled various forms of stereotyped behaviors, abnormal focused affections, compulsions, rigidity, savant skills, and defensiveness. Agreements be tween raters for individual participants were low to moderate. However , the item prevalence scores for the two groups of observers were stab le. Correlations between several items were significant. I;actor analy ses produced weak evidence for a general Stereotypy factor and further evidence for 6 to 8 subfactors, some of which are generally consisten t with accepted classification of the types of behaviors studied here.