Basic and Clinical Studies in Reinforcing Positive Behaviors in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

Children with intellectual disabilities often display severe destructive behaviors that pose significant risk to self or others and represent barriers to community integration. These destructive behaviors are often treated with behavioral interventions derived from a functional analysis (FA), which is used to identify the environmental antecedents and consequences that occasion and reinforce (i.e., reward) the target response. One such treatment is called differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA), which involves extinction (i.e., removal of rewards) of destructive behavior and reinforcement of an alternative communication response with the consequence that previously reinforced destructive behavior. Results from review studies indicate that interventions based on an FA, like DRA, typically reduce problem behavior by 90% or more.

One commonly used DRA intervention is functional communication training (FCT). During FCT, clinicians withhold reinforcement for destructive behavior and teach the individual a functional communication response to access reinforcement. For instance, a clinician may teach the child to exchange communication cards to express their wants and needs. However, DRA interventions reported in the literature have typically been evaluated by experts in controlled research settings, and treatment relapse often occurs in the natural environment when a caregiver is unable reinforce the DRA response every time that the response occurs due to competing responsibilities. Accordingly, a recent investigation of 25 applications of DRA found that relapse of problem behavior occurred in 76% of cases.

Resurgence as Choice Theory helps to explain why treatment relapse occurs under these circumstances and also provides mathematical equations that can be used to predict the variables that increase and decrease the likelihood that treatment relapse will occur. In this project, the investigators have used these equations to identify refinements to DRA that are likely to decrease the probability that treatment relapse will occur when the DRA response is not reinforced. In some cases, these refinements are at odds with what is recommended in the clinical literature on DRA. Therefore, it is important to evaluate these refinements that are derived from Resurgence as Choice Theory in order to determine the best way to implement DRA, so that treatment remains effective when it is implemented with less than perfect precision by caregivers in the natural environment.

The two predictions that are most relevant to our project are (a) resurgence of destructive behavior will decrease with increased DRA treatment duration, and (b) resurgence of destructive behavior will decrease with smaller, rather than larger, decreases in the availability of alternative reinforcement during the process of reinforcement schedule thinning. Accordingly, our project will examine the effects of different durations of DRA on resurgence and evaluate the effects of differently sized decreases in the availability of reinforcement to avoid resurgence. Findings from this project could have vast clinical implications for the treatment of severe destructive behavior.