Clinicians frequently prescribe functional communication training (FCT) as a treatment for severe destructive behavior. Recent research has shown that FCT treatments are susceptible to treatment relapse in the form of resurgence of destructive behavior when individuals contact periods in which reinforcers are unavailable. Results of preliminary studies suggest that teaching multiple response alternatives can mitigate the resurgence of target behavior. The current evaluation serves as a preliminary study in which we used a laboratory arrangement to evaluate the effects of a novel approach to training multiple alternative responses on the resurgence of target behavior. Findings showed that multiple-response training did not decrease resurgence of target responding consistently; however, it increased the total amount of target and alternative responding observed during the resurgence phase and decreased the overall probability of the target response.
Previous basic research has shown that signaling the extinction component of a compound schedule can be aversive and nonpreferred. However, such discriminative stimuli are common when thinning schedules of reinforcement in practice, and they provide several advantages to clinicians. A limitation of previous applied studies on different arrangements of discriminative stimuli is that researchers have used identical stimuli to signal the availability of reinforcement across conditions that do and do not signal extinction, often doubling exposure to the stimulus signaling the availability of reinforcement. The present experiments corrected this limitation by comparing multiple-schedule arrangements that do and do not signal extinction when unique stimuli signal each component across conditions. Results from three participants indicated that both multiple-schedule arrangements were similarly efficacious when teaching the successive discrimination. However, response patterns differed when testing under a concurrent-operants arrangement, suggesting different patterns of preference across various multiple-schedule arrangements.
Food preference assessments have been used in the assessment and treatment of pediatric feeding disorders for a variety of reasons. However, descriptions of food preference assessments in the general literature were originally implemented with children without feeding problems, and therefore may require clarifications and modifications when used with children who exhibit inappropriate mealtime behavior when foods are presented. We reviewed studies published in peer-reviewed journals to identify current descriptions for food preference assessments with children who have feeding disorders. Overall, we found that clear technological descriptions of procedures used were generally absent. As a result, we discuss the importance of, and need for, refining operational definitions and technological descriptions of food preference assessments in the feeding literature, as well as suggestions on how to do so.
