A paradoxical effect of presession attention on stereotypy: antecedent attention as an establishing, not an abolishing, operation.

The team ran a standard analogue functional analysis on one adult with intellectual disability.

Before each test session they gave the person five minutes of friendly, noncontingent attention.

They wanted to see if this presession attention would act like an "abolishing operation" and make stereotypy drop.

Stereotypy went up, not down, after the free attention.

The behavior looked exactly like an attention-maintained function.

The extra attention had accidentally served as an "establishing operation" instead.

O'Reilly et al. (2000) had already shown that odd attention contingencies can hide in brief FAs. Their "parents-talking-to-third-person" probe caught one; the 2006 study adds a new wrinkle—just giving attention ahead of time can also set the stage for more stereotypy.

Doughty et al. (2010) later took the same insight into real jobs. They cut idle wait time and poured on praise, turning the attention function upside-down so three adults with autism worked more and stereotyped less.

Tiger et al. (2017) looked at stereotypy too, but taught kids to stop on cue with S- stimuli and response blocking. Their positive results don’t clash with Tyrer et al. (2006); they simply attack the behavior from a different angle—stimulus control instead of antecedent attention.

If your FA graphs look flat or confusing, check whether you gave attention right before the session. Try running a second cycle without that presession chat; a clear attention function may pop out. The quick fix saves hours of extra testing and keeps your treatment plan on target.