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.     

NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT IN APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS: AN EMERGING TECHNOLOGY

Although the effects of negative reinforcement on human behavior have been studied for a number of years, a comprehensive body of applied research does not exist at this time. This article describes three aspeas of negative reinforcement as it relates to applied behavior analysis: behavior acquired or maintained through negative reinforcement, the treatment of negatively reinforced behavior, and negative reinforcement as therapy. A consideration of research currently being done in these areas suggests the emergence of an applied technology on negative reinforcement.     

Human aggressive responses maintained by avoidance or escape from point loss.

During 50-min sessions, 6 male human subjects could press either Button A or Button B available as nonreversible options. Button A presses were nonaggressive responses and earned points according to a fixed-ratio 100 schedule. Prior to the experiment subjects were instructed that every 10 (fixed-ratio 10) Button B presses (aggressive responses) subtracted a point from a fictitious 2nd subject. A random-time schedule of point loss was used to engender aggressive responding. The instructions attributed these point losses to the Button B presses of the subject's fictitious partner. Aggressive responding either escaped or avoided point loss by initiating an interval free of point loss. The duration of the interval was varied systematically across sessions. Avoidance contingencies maintained a high rate of aggressive responding over 30 sessions in the absence of point loss. Escape contingencies also maintained aggressive responding across sessions, with rates of aggressive responding corresponding to rates of point loss.     

Assessing the role of alternative response rates and reinforcer rates in resistance to extinction of target responding when combining stimuli

Studies of behavioral momentum reveal that reinforcing an alternative response in the presence of a target response reduces the rate of target responding but increases its persistence, relative to training the target response on its own. Because of the parallels between these studies and differential‐reinforcement techniques to reduce problem behavior in clinical settings, alternative techniques to reduce problem behavior without enhancing its persistence are being explored. One potential solution is to train an alternative response in a separate stimulus context from problem behavior before combining the alternative stimulus with the target stimulus. The present study assessed how differences in reinforcement contingencies and rate for alternative responding influenced resistance to extinction of target responding when combining alternative and target stimuli in pigeons. Across three experiments, alternative stimuli signaling a response–reinforcer dependency and greater reinforcer rates more effectively decreased the persistence of target responding when combining alternative and target stimuli within the same extinction tests, but not when compared across separate extinction tests. Overall, these findings reveal that differences in competition between alternative and target responding produced by contingencies of alternative reinforcement could influence the effectiveness of treating problem behavior through combining stimulus contexts.     

EVALUATION OF THE “CONTROL OVER REINFORCEMENT” COMPONENT IN FUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION TRAINING

The effectiveness of functional communication training (FCT) as a treatment for behavior disorders has been attributed to a number of variables, one of which is the individual's ability to exert control over the delivery of reinforcement. We evaluated this component of FCT by exposing individuals to conditions in which their behavior either did or did not affect the delivery of reinforcement. Three adults with mental retardation who engaged in self-injurious behavior (SIB) participated. Following a functional analysis of their SIB, the effects of FCT were compared to those of noncontingent reinforcement (NCR) in a multielement design. The amount of reinforcement during both conditions was equated by yoking the schedule of reinforcement during NCR sessions to that in effect during FCT sessions. Results indicated that FCT and NCR were equally effective in reducing the SIB of all participants and suggest that control over reinforcement delivery may not affect the degree to which FCT produces behavioral suppression. However, a different benefit of FCT was evident in the results: More consistent increases in the alternative response were observed during the FCT condition than during the NCR condition.     

Differences in the effect of Pavlovian contingencies upon behavioral momentum using auditory versus visual stimuli.

We examined the role of Pavlovian and operant relations in behavioral momentum by arranging response-contingent alternative reinforcement in one component of a three-component multiple concurrent schedule with rats. This permitted the simultaneous arranging of different response-reinforcer (operant) and stimulus-reinforcer (Pavlovian) contingencies during three baseline conditions. Auditory or visual stimuli were used as discriminative stimuli within the multiple concurrent schedules. Resistance to change of a target response was assessed during a single session of extinction following each baseline condition. The rate of the target response during baseline varied inversely with the rate of response-contingent reinforcement derived from a concurrent source, regardless of whether the discriminative stimuli were auditory or visual. Resistance to change of the target response, however, did depend on the discriminative-stimulus modality. Resistance to change in the presence of visual stimuli was a positive function of the Pavlovian contingencies, whereas resistance to change was unrelated to either the operant or Pavlovian contingencies when the discriminative stimuli were auditory. Stimulus salience may be a factor in determining the differences in resistance to change across sensory modalities.     

Contribution of Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex to the Acquisition and Extinction of Conditioned Fear in Rats

The ventrolateral, agranular insular portion of prefrontal cortex (PFC) in rats is involved in visceral functions and has been shown to be involved in emotional processes. However, its contribution to aversive learning has not been well defined. Classical fear conditioning has been a powerful tool for illuminating some of the primary neural structures involved in aversive emotional learning. We measured both the acquisition and the extinction of conditioned fear following lesions of the ventrolateral PFC of rats. Lesions reduced fear reactivity to contextual stimuli associated with conditioning without affecting CS acquisition, and had no effect on response extinction. Ventrolateral PFC may normally be involved in the processing of contextual information while not being directly involved in extinction processes within the aversive domain.     

VISUAL SCREENING: AN ALTERNATIVE METHOD FOR REDUCING STEREOTYPIC BEHAVIORS

Visual screening, a mildly aversive response suppression procedure, was evaluated across two studies for its effectiveness in reducing topographically similar and dissimilar stereotypic behaviors of four developmentally disabled children. In the first study, a multiple baseline design across subjects and behaviors was used to assess the effectiveness of the procedure as a treatment for reducing the visual and auditory self-stimulatory responses of two 9-yr-old mentally retarded and behaviorally disturbed children. A multiple baseline design across subjects was used in the second study to evaluate the effectiveness of visual screening as a treatment for reducing stereotypic fabric pulling and self-mutilative ear bending, respectively, of two 13-yr-old mentally retarded, autisticlike adolescents. Long-term follow-up data for both studies were reported. The results suggested that visual screening was an easily administered, effective, and exceptionally durable treatment procedure for controlling a variety of stereotypic behaviors commonly associated with the developmentally disabled.     

A sequential learning analysis of decisions in organizations to escalate investments despite continuing costs or losses

Reinforcement process may underlie decisions frequently found in organizations to escalate investments of time, money and other resources in strategies (e.g., product development, capital investment, plant expansion) that do not result in immediate reinforces. Whereas cognitive biases have been proffered in previous explanations, the present analysis suggested that this persistence is a form of resistance to extinction arising from experiences with past investments that were variably reinforced. This explanation was examined in two experiments by varying the pattern of returns and losses subjects experienced for investment decisions prior to experiencing a series losses. Consistent with the proposed explanation, two conditions resulted in higher levels of recommitment during continuous losses: (a) training using a variable schedule of partial reinforcement, and (b) no training on the task. Results indicate that behavior analysis can be used to understand and control situations in organizations that are prone to escalation, such as investments in the research and development of new product lines and extensions of further loans to customers.