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.
Automatically reinforced Subtype 2 self-injurious behavior (ASIB) has been characterized as showing insensitivity to competing reinforcement contingencies in the contexts of both functional analyses and in treatment using reinforcement alone (Hagopian, Rooker, &Yenokyan, 2018). One question is whether this insensitivity is specific to Subtype 2 ASIB as response class in these contexts or whether it is represents a generalized response tendency of the individual that is evident across other response classes. To examine this question, we compared responding on a single-operant task under changing reinforcement schedules for three individuals with Subtype 2 ASIB, relative to a comparison group of three individuals with socially reinforced SIB (which is characterized by sensitivity to changes in reinforcement contingencies). As hypothesized, all individuals showed sensitivity to changes in contingencies. These results provide preliminary support that the insensitivity of Subtype 2 ASIB is a property specific to that response class in these contexts rather than a generalized response tendency of the individual.
