The Effects of Presession Manipulations on Automatically Maintained Challenging Behavior and Task Responding

Abstract

This study examined the effects of presession exposure to attention, response blocking, attention with response blocking, and noninteraction conditions on subsequent engagement in automatically maintained challenging behavior and correct responding in four individuals with significant intellectual disabilities. Following a functional analysis, the effects of the four presession conditions were examined using multielement designs. Results varied across the 4 participants (e.g., presession noninteraction acted as an abolishing operation for 2 participants, but as an establishing operation for the other 2 participants). As such, both the results replicated and contradicted previous research examining the effects of motivating operations on automatically maintained challenging behavior. Although the results varied across participants, at least one condition resulting in a decrease in challenging behavior and an increase in correct responding were identified for each participant. These findings suggested that presession manipulations resulted in decreases in subsequent automatically maintained challenging behavior and simultaneous increases in correct responding might need to be individually identified when the maintaining contingencies cannot be identified.

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“…At a local level, these studies may help professionals to get a greater understanding of the nature of the behavior as well as a better identification of effective strategies to address youth's behavioral needs (e.g., Chung and Cannella-Malone 2010;O'Reilly and Lancioni 2000;Todd et al 2008). Understanding the nature of these behaviors and preventing their occurrence are crucial in promoting more positive and educational environments for children.…”

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