Differential Reinforcement of Acceptance without Escape Extinction in a Boy with Developmental Delays and Food Selectivity

Further evaluation of contingency modeling to increase consumption of nutritive foods in children with autism and food selectivity

“…There have been mixed results in the feeding literature with respect to the effectiveness of differential reinforcement, contingency modeling, or a combination of these, to treat feeding problems. For example, some studies have suggested that differential reinforcement in isolation does not increase acceptance (e.g., Ahearn, 2002;Najdowski et al, 2003;Patel et al, 2002), yet a recent study suggests differential reinforcement alone may be effective in some cases (de los Santos & Silbaugh, 2020). Other studies have found that modeling differential reinforcement can increase acceptance of nonpreferred foods when combined with differential reinforcement (Greer et al, 1991;Sira & Fryling, 2012) which we observed for Luke.…”

Behavior Analytic Feeding Interventions: Current State of the Literature

“…In a clinical case study, de los Santos and Silbaugh (2020) demonstrated that differential reinforcement with contingent access to preferred foods increased consumption of non-preferred foods in a 4-year-old boy with developmental delays and food selectivity. Initially, improvements in acceptance of target foods were not seen with the intervention in place, but after re-assessing client preference by conducting a formal preference assessment, a new edible reinforcer was identified.…”

“…There has been a trend of recently published studies that examine solely antecedent-based interventions, such as modeling ( Hillman, 2019 ; O’Connor et al, 2020 ), high probability response sequences ( Silbaugh & Swinnea, 2019 ; Trejo & Fryling, 2018 ), and simultaneous presentation combined with stimulus fading ( Cho & Sonoyama, 2020 ). Researchers have also examined differential reinforcement alone ( de los Santos, & Silbaugh, 2020 ), and response shaping ( Turner et al, 2020 ) to expand diet variety in children with food selectivity. The findings and contributions of these recent studies are summarized below.…”

Incorporating Trauma-Informed Care Strategies Into the Assessment of and Intervention for Food Selectivity: A Pilot Investigation

“…ABA interventions are based on the circumstantial view of behavior that unique, environmental histories of an individual contribute to and maintain eating patterns. To address this problem, interventions such as escape extinction (Piazza et al, 2003), differential reinforcement (de los Santos & Silbaugh, 2020; Tereshko et al, 2023), shaping or stimulus fading (Roth et al, 2010; Tanner and Andreone, 2023), sequential presentation (Kozlowski et al, 2011), and contingency modeling (Flanagan et al, 2021), to name a few, have been employed.…”

“…Trauma-informed care (TIC) is a proactive, preventative approach to human services that takes the potential past or present trauma of a client into consideration when designing and providing rehabilitative services (DeCandia et al, 2014). The goal of a TIC approach is to facilitate meaningful, uncoerced participation in one's care in a manner that does not exacerbate potential trauma (Rajaraman et al, 2022).…”