Examining procedural variations of delivering competing stimuli in the treatment of stereotypy

Document Type

Thesis

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Psychology

Degree

M.S. Applied Behavior Analysis

Date Completed

2020

First Committee Member

Ahearn, William H.

Second Committee Member

Roscoe, Eileen

Third Committee Member

Henley, Amy

Abstract

"Competing stimulus assessments (CSA) have been found to be effective tools for identifying stimuli that compete with automatically reinforced challenging behavior. Jennett et al. (2011) found that there were cases for which non-contingent access to competing stimuli was insufficient at decreasing target responding to appropriate levels and additional treatment components were necessary. The purpose of the current study was to examine procedural variations (i.e., rotating competing items and prompted engagement) when presenting competing stimuli on engagement and motor stereotypy. Following a standard functional analysis, and A-CSA was conducted to identify effective competing stimuli for three individuals with autism. Items identified in the A-CSA were then used the two modified treatments and levels of motor stereotypy, functional engagement, and item contact were measured. Results found that for 1/3 participants both treatments were effective, while for 2/3 participants prompted engagement competing items was the more effective strategy. Prompting functional engagement is likely a productive strategy for enhancing the effectiveness of competing stimuli for automatically reinforced problem behavior."

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