Positive reinforcement was more effective than negative reinforcement in promoting compliance and reducing escape-maintained problem behavior for a child with autism. Escape extinction was then added while the child was given a choice between positive or negative reinforcement for compliance and the reinforcement schedule was thinned. When the reinforcement requirement reached 10 consecutive tasks, the treatment effects became inconsistent and reinforcer selection shifted from a strong preference for positive reinforcement to an unstable selection pattern.DESCRIPTORS: differential reinforcement, compliance, choice, escape-maintained behavior, behavioral economics Recent studies have demonstrated that positive reinforcement for task compliance can increase compliance and decrease escapemaintained problem behavior even when problem behavior continues to result in escape (Lalli et al., 1999;Piazza et al., 1997). Moreover, participants in the study by Lalli et al. continued to display low levels of problem behavior when the negative reinforcement schedule for problem behavior was far denser than the positive reinforcement schedule for compliance. These authors suggested that the value of positive reinforcement exceeded that of negative reinforcement even when schedule discrepancies favored the latter.In the current study, we first reexamined the relative effects of positive and negative reinforcement for compliance, without extinction, on levels of compliance and escapeThis investigation was supported in part by Grant 1 R01 HD37837-01 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.Address correspondence to Iser G. DeLeon, Neurobehavioral Unit, Kennedy Krieger Institute, 707 N. Broadway, Baltimore, Maryland 21205 (E-mail: deleon@kennedykrieger.org). maintained problem behavior. We then reexamined potential changes in the relative value of positive and negative reinforcement as a function of increasing reinforcement schedule values. However, unlike Lalli et al. (1999), the second analysis was conducted while problem behavior was on extinction and positive or negative reinforcement could be earned only through appropriate behavior. A direct comparison of the relative value of positive and negative reinforcement was made using a chained schedule procedure in which completion of the required number of tasks produced the opportunity to choose positive or negative reinforcement. METHOD Participant and Target BehaviorsSamantha, a 10-year-old girl who had been diagnosed with autism, had been admitted to an inpatient unit for the assessment and treatment of severe behavior disorders. Samantha communicated using three-to four-word phrases and followed multistep instructions. Her aberrant behaviors included self-injury (scratching herself ),

Several brief preference assessments have recently been developed to identify reinforcers for individuals with developmental disabilities. One purported advantage of brief assessments is that they can be administered frequently, thus accommodating shifts in preference and presumably enhancing reinforcement effects. In this study, we initially conducted lengthy paired-choice preference assessments and identified a hierarchy of preferred items for 5 individuals with developmental disabilities. Subsequently, brief multiplestimulus-without-replacement assessments using the same items were completed each day prior to work sessions. On days when results of the daily brief assessment differed from the one-time lengthy assessment, the relative reinforcing effects of the top items from each assessment were compared in a concurrent-schedule arrangement. The results revealed that when the two assessments differed, participants generally allocated more responses to the task associated with the daily top-ranked item.

Recent research has shown that the noncontingent delivery of competing stimuli can effectively reduce rates of destructive behavior maintained by social-positive reinforcement, even when the contingency for destructive behavior remains intact. It may be useful, therefore, to have a systematic means for predicting which reinforcers do and do not compete successfully with the reinforcer that is maintaining destructive behavior. In the present study, we conducted a brief competing stimulus assessment in which noncontingent access to a variety of tangible stimuli (one toy per trial) was superimposed on a fixed-ratio 1 schedule of attention for destructive behavior for individuals whose behavior was found to be reinforced by attention during a functional analysis. Tangible stimuli that resulted in the lowest rates of destructive behavior and highest percentages of engagement during the competing stimulus assessment were subsequently used in a noncontingent tangible items plus extinction treatment package and were compared to noncontingent attention plus extinction and extinction alone. Results indicated that both treatments resulted in greater reductions in the target behavior than did extinction alone and suggested that the competing stimulus assessment may be helpful in predicting stimuli that can enhance the effects of extinction when noncontingent attention is unavailable.

A functional analysis suggested that the bizarre speech of an individual with developmental disabilities was maintained by attention. The content of verbal attention was manipulated in two subsequent analyses and revealed that (a) bizarre speech was more frequent when attention was related to the participant's bizarre speech and (b) the participant's statements tended to reflect the content of the therapist's attention, whether bizarre or nonbizarre.