Association for Behavior Analysis International

The first presentation reports data on the extent to which a functional reinforcement contingency may facilitate receptive discriminations in children with ASD. The number of trials needed to establish four receptive discriminations was assessed using either a functional reinforcement contingency (e.g., if cookie was the sample stimulus, identifying the cookie produced cookie as a consequence) or an arbitrary reinforcement contingency (e.g., highly preferred stimuli were used as reinforcers, but they had no relation to the stimulus material). The second presentation canters on variables that can predict overall treatment outcome. Given the central role of positive reinforcement in (early intensive behavioral intervention) EIBI, it has been hypothesized that the more reinforcers are available for teaching a specific child, the more that child will benefit from treatment. The second presentation report data on how assessing preferred items that can be used to predict rate of learning in children with ASD receiving EIBI.

Many behavior analytic procedures have proven successful in establishing receptive discriminations in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Most procedures are based on discrete trial teaching, and adding a prompt to the relation between the instruction and the response. Despite applying a number of well-documented effective procedures, some children have difficulties learning receptive discriminations. The purpose of this study was to examine if a functional reinforcement contingency could facilitate receptive discriminations in these children. We compared the number of trials needed to establish four receptive discriminations following well-established procedures under a functional reinforcement contingency and an arbitrary reinforcement contingency in an alternating treatment design. Three out of the six participants showed more rapid acquisition in the functional reinforcement condition. The remaining participants did not establish any discrimination in neither of the conditions. These findings suggest that arranging a functional response-reinforcer contingency should be considered when encountering children that struggle to establish receptive language through more traditional teaching procedures.

Toys, activities and other items that a child express interest in can function as contrived reinforcers during treatment. However, some reinforcers are controlled solely by the stereotyped behavior of the child, and may compete with contrived reinforcement, such when a child produce sensory reinforcement by eye-gazing, rather than complying with a therapist to receive contrived reinforcement. Klintwall and Eikeseth (2012) developed a questionnaire to indirectly assess these types of stimuli, and found that when subtracting the number of stereotyped behaviors from the number of preferred items that potentially could be used as contrived reinforcers (i.e., SMARQ total score); this controlled 50% of the variance in treatment outcome. The present study was designed to replicate and extend the study by Klintwall and Eikeseth (2012), using a prospective design, a new sample, and by assessing preferred items and stereotyped behaviors at intake, rather than later in treatment. Results replicated the findings of Klintwall and Eikeseth (2012) by showing a correlation between SMARQ total score and outcome after one year of EIBI. An interpretation of these results is that for every SMARQ total score, the learn rate in treatment increased by one month per year.