Association for Behavior Analysis International

Behaviors maintained by automatic reinforcement can present a challenge and are often more difficult to treat than behaviors maintained by social reinforcement. This challenge is often due to the mechanism that is maintaining the behavior and the inability to fully control access to the automatic reinforcement.. This challenge is compounded by limited empirically validated treatment options. The current symposium will present two papers focused on developing innovative treatments for behavior maintained by automatic reinforcement. The first paper focuses on the validation of a free-operant competing stimulus assessment (FOCSA) as an effective tool for identifying items which are highly-preferred, but also result in high-rates of stereotypy (HP-HS) and items which are highly-preferred, but result in low-rates of stereotypy (HP-LS). Results demonstrated the immediate effects of the HP-LS and HP-HS stimuli were correctly predicted by the FOCSA for each participant. The second paper focuses on the use of an activity schedule as a treatment for automatically maintained problem behaviors. Specifically, this study evaluated the use of providing differential reinforcement of an alternative behavior for completion of an activity schedule (without the use of differential reinforcement for the absence of the automatically-maintained problem behavior). Taken together, the results of both studies provide support for continued research on refinements and development of novel treatment approaches for behaviors maintained by automatic reinforcement.

Frewing, Rapp, and Pastrana (2015) described a free-operant competing stimulus assessment (FOCSA) wherein they compared conditional probabilities of participants? engaging in stereotypy while manipulating items to the unconditional probability of stereotypy. We conducted a series of experiments to further evaluate this assessment tool. In Experiment 1, we showed that each participant?s repetitive behavior persisted without social consequences. In Experiment 2, we used the same FOCSA to identify high-preference, low stereotypy (HP-LS) items for four participants and high-preference, high-stereotypy (HP-HS) items for four participants. To validate the results of the FOCSAs (Experiment 3), we used a three-component multiple schedule to evaluate the immediate effects of a HP-LS stimulus, a HP-HS stimulus, or both (in separate test sequences) on each participant?s stereotypy. Results of Experiment 3 showed that the immediate effects of the HP-LS and HP-HS stimuli were correctly predicted by the FOCSA for each participant. We briefly discuss the clinical implications and limitations of this study, as well as directions for future research with this FOCSA.