Evaluation of competing item treatment efficacy for problem behavior maintained by automatic reinforcement

Document Type

Thesis

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Psychology

Degree

M.S. Applied Behavior Analysis

Date Completed

2021

First Committee Member

Sassi, Jessica

Second Committee Member

Thompson, Rachel

Third Committee Member

Roscoe, Eileen

Abstract

"The goal of the current study was to extend the procedures of the modified CSA protocol developed by Jennet et al. (2011) and evaluate their use in a treatment designed to establish appropriate leisure skills and reduce two automatically maintained interfering behaviors for a young adult diagnosed with an ASD. First, a functional analysis was conducted to determine whether the behaviors of interest were automatically maintained. Next, a CSA was conducted to identify items associated with high levels of engagement and low levels of problem behavior; the lowest levels of interfering behavior and the highest levels of engagement occurred during the prompted engagement and response blocking CSA condition. Next, experimenters conducted a treatment extension to evaluate the necessity of the prompting and blocking treatment components. In this phase, the therapist allowed noncontingent access to the most effective competing items during 8 min sessions paired with those treatment components. Results showed that noncontingent access to leisure items alone may not be consistently effective in decreasing automatically maintained challenging behavior, however, response blocking paired with noncontingent access to leisure items produced clinically significant behavior reduction."

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