Behavioral Development, Vol 27(1-2), Apr-Oct 2022, 1-20; doi:10.1037/bdb0000107
During the treatment of destructive behavior, clinicians may encounter situations in which reinforcement-based procedures alone (e.g., functional communication training; FCT) may be insufficient at reducing destructive behavior to clinically significant levels and/or the severity of destructive behavior necessitates immediate intervention. In these situations, consideration of punishment may be warranted. In the current evaluation, we sought to evaluate: (a) whether caregivers can implement stimulus avoidance assessment procedures with fidelity, (b) the degree of correspondence between results of caregiver-implemented and therapist-implemented stimulus avoidance assessments, and (c) change in caregiver social acceptability ratings from pre to postimplementation. We then incorporated empirically-derived response reduction procedures into the FCT treatment package with caregivers. Results indicated that caregivers implemented the stimulus avoidance assessment with high fidelity, experienced a shift in rating of social acceptability postimplementation, and caregiver-implementation of FCT with response reduction procedures resulted in clinically significant reductions in destructive behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)