An evaluation of a renewal‐mitigation procedure for inappropriate mealtime behavior
Keep extinction plus praise accepted bites for the first few home meals to stop renewal when you hand the plan to caregivers.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Haney et al. (2021) watched seven kids with feeding disorders. Each child first got extinction in a clinic room. Later Mom or Dad took over the same plan at home.
The team asked: will the old problem behavior pop back when the room changes? If it does, can one extra step stop it?
What they found
Four of the seven kids showed renewal. Their mealtime problems returned the moment they ate at home.
The fix was simple. Keep extinction going and praise every bite the child accepts. This short add-on wiped out renewal for all four kids.
How this fits with other research
Ibañez et al. (2019) saw the same renewal but offered no fix. Haney et al. (2021) gives the first clear solution to that exact problem.
Haney et al. (2022) later counted renewal in over half of extinction feeding cases. The 2021 paper shows how to beat those odds.
Kimball et al. (2020) found that adding differential reinforcement cuts ABA renewal in lab tasks. Haney moved the same idea into real-life meals.
Why it matters
You already know extinction works in clinic. This paper tells you to expect relapse when caregivers take over. Add one five-minute step: keep ignoring problem behavior and praise accepted bites. Do it for the first few home meals. You block renewal before it starts and keep gains lasting.
Get CEUs on This Topic — Free
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ on-demand CEUs including ethics, supervision, and clinical topics like this one. Plus a new live CEU every Wednesday.
Tell the parent to ignore problem bites and praise accepted bites for the next three home meals.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Renewal, the increase in behavior during extinction following context changes, may be particularly concerning during intervention for feeding disorders because context changes are often necessary for intervention generality and maintenance (Podlesnik et al., 2017). In the current study, we tested for renewal and evaluated a renewal-mitigation procedure when we transferred intervention from a therapist to a caregiver, from clinic to the home, and changed the foods the feeder presented. We used an ABA arrangement to evaluate the generality of the renewal effect with 7 participants who engaged in inappropriate mealtime behavior. Context A was functional reinforcement. Context B was function-based extinction during the control and mitigation conditions and our renewal-mitigation procedure in the mitigation condition. The renewal test was function-based extinction in Context A. We observed renewal of inappropriate mealtime behavior in 4 of 7 participants, and our renewal-mitigation procedure was effective for 4 of 4 participants.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2021 · doi:10.1002/jaba.815