COMBINING STIMULUS FADING,REINFORCEMENT, AND EXTINCTION TO TREAT FOOD REFUSAL

The food refusal of a 6-year-old girl with destructive behavior was treated using stimulus fading, reinforcement, and escape extinction. Intake increased and compliance with prompting procedures remained relatively stable despite the increased consumption requirement.     

The clinical utility of behavior rating scales: Comments on the diagnostic assessment of ADHD

Responding to Reid and Maag's critique of behavior rating scales in assessing ADHD, published in a previous issue of the Journal of School Psychology, we provided specific recommendations for improving the accuracy of diagnostic decisions using rating scales and affirmed the importance of these procedures in the assessment of ADHD. Strategies for managing the error intrinsic to the use of diagnostic measures, specifically behavior rating scales, were outlined. A multiple stage procedure, involving one or more levels of screening prior to conducting a diagnostic assessment, was recommended as a strategy to increase diagnostic accuracy in a time- and cost-efficient manner.     

USING A CHOICE ASSESSMENT TO PREDICT REINFORCER EFFECTIVENESS

A choice assessment has been found to be a more accurate method of identifying preferences than is single-item presentation. However, it is not clear whether the effectiveness of reinforcement varies positively with the degree of preference (i.e., whether the relative preference based on the results of a choice assessment predicts relative reinforcer effectiveness). In the current study, we attempted to address this question by categorizing stimuli as high, middle, and low preference based on the results of a choice assessment, and then comparing the reinforcing effectiveness of these stimuli using a concurrent operants paradigm. High-preference stimuli consistently functioned as reinforcers for all 4 clients. Middle-preference stimuli functioned as reinforcers for 2 clients, but only when compared with low-preference stimuli. Low-preference stimuli did not function as reinforcers when compared to high- and middle-preference stimuli. These results suggest that a choice assessment can be used to predict the relative reinforcing value of various stimuli, which, in turn, may help to improve programs for clients with severe to profound disabilities.     

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS AND TREATMENT OF CIGARETTE PICA

A series of analyses was conducted to assess and treat the pica of cigarette butts by a young man with mental retardation and autism. First, we demonstrated that pica was maintained in a condition with no social consequences when the available cigarettes contained nicotine but not when the cigarettes contained herbs without nicotine. Second, a choice assessment (Fisher et al., 1992) confirmed that tobacco was preferred over the other components of the cigarette (e.g., paper, filter, etc.). Third, an analogue functional analysis (Iwata, Dorsey, Slifer, Bauman, & Richman, 1982/1994) demonstrated that cigarette pica was maintained independent of social consequences. Fourth, a treatment designed to interrupt the hypothesized response—reinforcer relationship reduced consumption of cigarettes to zero. Finally, because cigarette pica occurred primarily when the individual was alone or under minimal supervision, a procedure based on stimulus control was developed to improve the effectiveness of the intervention in these situations.     

Mitigating resurgence of destructive behavior using the discriminative stimuli of a multiple schedule

Results of several recent translational studies have suggested that correlating contextual or discriminative stimuli with the delivery and withholding of reinforcement for the functional communication response (FCR) may mitigate resurgence of destructive behavior, but few, if any, have isolated the effects of those stimuli. In the present study, we first trained the FCR, brought it under stimulus control of a multiple schedule, and thinned its reinforcement schedule in one stimulus context. Next, we conducted resurgence evaluations (i.e., baseline, functional communication training [FCT], extinction challenge) in two novel contexts to test the effects of the discriminative stimuli on resurgence. We programmed one context to include the (a) S^D during the FCT phase to signal the availability of reinforcement for the FCR and (b) S^Δ during a subsequent extinction challenge to signal the unavailability of reinforcement for the FCR. The other context did not include the S^D during the FCT phase, nor the S^Δ during the extinction challenge. We expected to see greater persistence of the FCR in the context that included the S^D during FCT and less persistence of the FCR and less resurgence of destructive behavior in the context that included the S^Δ during the extinction challenge. Obtained results confirmed this latter prediction, but we observed no reliable difference when the S^D was present or absent during the FCT phase. Our results have relevance for practitioners in that they provide further empirical support for the use of discriminative stimuli when treating destructive behavior.     

Parents' perceptions of their infant's day care experience

Parents of infants who had been enrolled in a day-care center were asked to evaluate their day-care experience as well as their children's current development status. In general, parent evaluations provided strong support for day care as an effective means of supplementary infant care. When dissatisfaction with day care was expressed, it focused on matters pertaining to infant health, physical resources of the center, parent involvement in center activities, and caregiver-infant ratios. Parents perceived their children to be advanced in competence skills relative to their peers. With few exceptions, parents viewed group day care as the most desirable type of supplementary infant care, but only if high-quality staff and programs could be assured.     

Nonspatial attributes of stimuli can influence spatial limitations of attentional control

A wide variety of psychophysical and neurophysiological research suggests that when stimuli are very close together, they cannot be attended separately. As a consequence, they cannot be represented as individual items with specific feature information associated with them. Here we report evidence that the spatial control of attention can be modulated by nonspatial features of the stimuli (such as color and luminance). Observers shifted attention from item to item within highly dense arrays of stimuli. Performance was extremely poor when all of the items in the array were an identical gray. In contrast, performance improved when items differed in color. This finding indicates that nonspatial features, such as color, can facilitate spatial selection and suggests moreover that features can be reliably associated with particular items even when the items are densely clustered.