Body-rocking in college students and persons with mental retardation: characteristics, stability, and collateral behaviors

Body-rocking was analyzed in four studies. The first showed that, rocking chairs are not necessarily preferred by people with mental retardation, and that a rocking chair produces a higher amplitude of body-rocking. A second study demonstrated the stability of various measures of body-rocking over a 21-month period. Stable idiosyncratic behaviors accompanying body-rocking also were described. The third study showed that, when compared with college students who engage in habitual body-rocking, persons with mental retardation engage in more body-rocking than college students on various dimensions, and that they also show different collateral behaviors. Finally, in the fourth study, a reanalysis of the data from Study I showed that collateral behaviors do not necessarily occur as part of a body-rocking complex. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.