Association for Behavior Analysis International

Our primary purpose in this study was to examine the effectiveness of teaching discriminated responding and tolerance for delay to reinforcement to two young children with autism and language delays. Our secondary purpose was to examine the childrens allocation of choices when multiple alternative activities were provided during the delay. First, we used a visual stimulus to teach each child to emit a mand to obtain access to a preferred item only when reinforcement was available (timer indicating green light; reinforcement condition) and to refrain from manding for a preferred item when reinforcement was not available (timer indicating red light; extinction condition). Next, we taught the children to tolerate delays to reinforcement by gradually increasing the duration of the extinction condition by embedding choices for alternative activities. Finally, we examined maintenance of the newly acquired delay for reinforcement skills. Data indicate that our intervention was effective in producing discriminated responding and in increasing tolerance to reinforcement. One child maintained the acquired skill 8 weeks after the intervention was discontinued. Data on choice allocation indicate both children showed a preference for a leisure activity when offered the opportunity to select an alternative activity during extinction from preferred items.

When problem behavior and verbal behavior co-occur, a listeners response to the verbal behavior may provide information on the function of problem behavior. The current study included a 16-year-old male and a 10-year-old female, both diagnosed with developmental disabilities, admitted to an inpatient unit for the treatment of problem behavior. Informal observations of the patients suggested problem behavior occurred when an adult failed to comply with requests for a specific verbal response (SVR). We initiated a functional analysis (FA) to confirm the relation between verbal behavior and problem behavior. During the test condition a therapist a) responded to requests for an SVR with a topographically incongruent verbal response, and b) complied with requests for an SVR when problem behavior occurred after the request was denied. In the control condition, the therapist complied with each request for an SVR. For both participants, results suggested problem behavior functioned to increase therapists compliance with a request for an SVR. Treatment for both participants involved a multiple schedule that rotated between intervals of differential reinforcement and extinction to reduce problem behavior and gain stimulus control over requests for SVRs. Methods for generalizing treatment procedures to similar idiosyncratic events and behaviors will be discussed.