Contextual influences on resistance to disruption in children with intellectual disabilities.
Mix rich and lean reinforcement within one session to help kids with ID keep working when distractions pop up.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with children who have intellectual disabilities.
They compared two ways to set up reinforcement schedules.
One way mixed rich and lean parts within the same session.
The other way put all rich trials in one block and all lean trials in another block.
They then added distractions to see which setup kept the kids working.
What they found
Kids trained with the mixed setup kept going longer during rich parts when distractions hit.
Kids trained with the blocked setup did not show this strong stay-power.
The result fits behavioral momentum theory: richer histories make behavior tougher to knock off.
How this fits with other research
Catania et al. (1972) saw the same mixed-schedule boost years earlier, but with typical adults doing a discrimination task.
Their early lab work gave the idea that schedule context matters; Amore et al. (2011) now show it helps kids with ID too.
Lozy et al. (2019) also compared mixed versus blocked setups.
They found lower-preferred reinforcers worked fine in single-operant trials, echoing the theme that context changes effect.
Together the three studies say: how you arrange the session, not just what you deliver, shapes learning.
Why it matters
If you run discrete-trial or table work, shuffle high-reward trials among low-reward ones within the same lesson.
This simple mix can make new skills stick better when the clinic gets noisy or you step away to take data.
No extra tokens or candy needed—just smarter timing.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Training context can influence resistance to disruption under differing reinforcement schedules. With nonhumans, when relatively lean and rich reinforcement schedules are experienced in the context of a multiple schedule, greater resistance is found in the rich than the lean component, as described by behavioral momentum theory. By contrast, when the schedules are experienced in separated blocks of sessions (i.e., as single schedules), resistance is not consistently greater in either component. In the current study, two groups of 6 children with intellectual disabilities responded to stimuli presented in relatively lean or rich components. For both, reinforcers were delivered according to the same variable-interval reinforcement schedule; additionally, the rich component included the delivery of response-independent reinforcers. The Within group was trained on a multiple schedule in which lean and rich components alternated regularly within sessions; the Blocked group was trained on two single schedules in which sessions with either the lean or rich schedule were conducted in successive blocks. Disruption tests presented a concurrently available alternative stimulus disrupter signaling the availability of tangible reinforcers. All 6 Within participants showed greater resistance to disruption in the rich component, consistent with behavioral momentum theory. By contrast, there was no consistent or significant difference in resistance for Blocked participants. This finding is potentially relevant to the development of interventions in applied settings, where such interventions often approximate single schedules and include response-independent reinforcers.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2011 · doi:10.1901/jeab.2011.96-317