Association for Behavior Analysis International

Individuals diagnosed with developmental disabilities often engage in challenging behaviors that require intervention. Function-based interventions have tremendous efficacy in most cases, but little is known about the utility of these interventions across long periods of time and outside of highly controlled clinical settings. Additionally, reinforcement-based procedures may not be effective in all cases, requiring exploration of alternative procedures. The first presentation in this symposium reviews the literature to evaluate the effectiveness of automatically-maintained self-injurious behavior (SIB) interventions along three dimensions: maintenance of intervention effects, longevity of the intervention, and schedule thinning of effective reinforcement schedules. Results note that limited available research program for these areas, indicating the need for additional research considering application of maintenance, longevity, and schedule thinning. The second presentation in this symposium presents data on punishment-based intervention to address challenging behaviors of clients in an intensive outpatient program. Data indicate an average percent reduction in challenging behavior of 79.26% at the end of admission, when compared to baseline percentages. Future research directions, including suggestions for component analyses, are discussed.

Most individuals who engage in challenging behavior respond to reinforcement-based systems. However, a small subset of clients do not. When their challenging behavior is causing a significant negative impact to development, the literature suggest implementing a stimulus avoidance assessment to guide consequence selections that are likely to serve as punishers (i.e., response reduction procedures). Past evaluations of treatment following a stimulus avoidance assessment has been limited to small samples. The current study conducted a consecutive case series analysis of clients in an intensive outpatient program for challenging behavior. All clients were admitted due to behavior that caused significant injury to themselves or others and/or their behavior did not respond to less intensive behavioral treatments. Of the records reviewed thus far, punishment was evaluated in 64 cases, with an average percent reduction in challenging behavior at the end of the admission (compared to baseline) of 79.26%. Several reinforcement-based approaches were exhausted before evaluation of punishment for all clients. Clients with a punishment evaluation were less likely to have challenging behavior maintained by social reinforcers. Caregiver acceptability and generalization of treatment effects are presented for a subset of participants. Future research directions, including suggestions for component analyses, are discussed.

Individuals diagnosed with various intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) often exhibit restrictive and repetitive behavior (RRB; Richler, Bishop, Kleinke, & Lorde, 2007). For some individuals, these RRBs include self-injurious behaviors (SIB), which are likely to cause injury and lead to social stigma and social implications for the individual (Minshaw et al., 2014). Although interventions including noncontingent reinforcement and differential reinforcement have been found to be effective for treating this type of SIB (e.g., Carr & Durand, 1985; Vollmer et al., 1993) most research has been conducted in clinical settings with tight control over extraneous variables and dense schedules of reinforcement in place. Thus, questions regarding effectiveness of such interventions in more natural settings remain. We reviewed the literature to evaluate the effectiveness of automatically-maintained SIB interventions along three dimensions: maintenance of intervention effects, longevity of the intervention, and schedule thinning of effective reinforcement schedules. Summarized data are included in the table below.