Establishing diurnal bladder control with the response restriction method: extended study on its effectiveness

In this study, the effect of response restriction as a method to establish diurnal bladder control was assessed with 40 participants with moderate and severe levels of mental handicap. Being an extension of a previous study [Am. J. Mental Retard. 106 (2001) 209], the significant decrease of the mean number of toileting accidents in function of initiating the procedure offers a further contribution to the validity of response restriction as a method for toilet training. A significant positive relationship between number of training hours and participants' chronological age and between number of toileting accidents during baseline and number of training hours was revealed. Advantages of the present procedure are that administering aversive consequences for toileting accidents (e.g., restitutional overcorrection) is to be omitted and the relatively short period of training time.