Affirming Control by Multiple Reinforcers via Progressive Treatment Analysis

It is common to isolate reinforcement contingencies across several test conditions in functional analyses of problem behavior; however, synthesizing all reinforcement contingencies in a single test condition may also have merit and even be necessary in some cases. Following a differentiated functional analysis, which relied on an interview‐informed synthesized test condition, functional communication training (FCT) was applied across the three suspected contingencies of reinforcement, partly in an attempt to understand the relevance of each. Communication responses were acquired for all three reinforcers, and problem behavior ceased only when all contingencies were addressed via FCT, suggesting that problem behavior was controlled by multiple contingencies of reinforcement. These analyses suggest that control by multiple contingencies of reinforcement can be understood during the treatment development process following a highly efficient functional analysis. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.