Department of Special Education, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
Department of Psychology and Human Development, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
J Appl Behav Anal. 2024 Jul;57(3):615-634. doi: 10.1002/jaba.1088. Epub 2024 Jun 2.
Extinction bursts, or temporary increases in rates and intensities of behavior during extinction, can preclude the inclusion of extinction in intervention packages meant to suppress severe challenging behavior. To identify underlying behavioral mechanisms responsible for response persistence and bursting, 69 adults with developmental disabilities completed a low-stakes translational investigation employing a 2 × 2 factorial, crossed, and randomized matched blocks design, with batched randomization logic. In each of the four test groups, we made distinct antecedent manipulations with two value parameters commonly studied through behavioral economics (i.e., demand intensity, P) and evaluated the extent to which each of these manipulations influenced target responding during extinction. Although we found statistically significant differences attributable to both parameters, variations in reinforcer consumption relative to demand intensity were most influential across all dependent variables. This outcome implicates consumption relative to demand intensity as both a mitigating and exacerbating preextinction factor that influences the prevalence of adverse collateral extinction effects (e.g., bursts).
灭绝爆发，即在灭绝过程中行为的速度和强度暂时增加，可能会排除将灭绝纳入旨在抑制严重挑战性行为的干预方案中。为了确定导致反应持续和爆发的潜在行为机制，69 名发育障碍成年人完成了一项低风险的转化研究，采用了 2×2 因子、交叉和随机匹配块设计，并采用了分批随机逻辑。在四个测试组中的每一组中，我们都对通过行为经济学（即需求强度，P）通常研究的两个值参数进行了不同的先行操作，并评估了这些操作中的每一个在灭绝过程中对目标反应的影响程度。尽管我们发现了归因于这两个参数的统计显著差异，但与需求强度相比，强化物消耗的变化在所有因变量中影响最大。这一结果表明，与需求强度相比的消耗既是减轻和加剧前灭绝因素的因素，它会影响不良的附带灭绝效应（例如爆发）的流行程度。
