Evaluating the effects of discriminability on behavioral persistence during and following time‐based reinforcement
Changing reinforcer color when you flip to non-contingent delivery helps most kids with autism drop old responses faster.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Saini’s team worked with four children with autism.
They used a time-based schedule: reinforcers arrived every 30 seconds no matter what the child did.
Half the time the reinforcer stayed the same color.
The other half the color switched when the schedule started.
The goal was to see if the color change helped the kids notice the new rule and stop old, now-useless responses.
What they found
Three of the four children dropped their old responses faster when the reinforcer color changed.
During later extinction the results were messy: some kids showed a small return of old behavior, others did not.
Overall, the color cue helped most kids notice the rule shift, but it did not fully block resurgence.
How this fits with other research
Milo et al. (2010) saw the opposite: varied edible reinforcers made kids work longer, not quit.
The difference is simple: variety keeps things fun, but a clear color switch says "new rule, stop old moves."
Shvarts et al. (2020) also used cues during extinction and saw only a tiny drop in resurgence, matching Saini’s mixed later-phase data.
Why it matters
When you move from contingent to non-contingent reinforcement, change at least one clear feature of the reinforcer.
A new color cup, new container, or new bead bag can signal the old response no longer pays.
Test it during your next NCR phase: if problem behavior keeps popping up, add a visual switch and watch the numbers.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
With four children with autism we evaluated a refinement to time-based reinforcement designed to reduce response persistence when we simultaneously introduced time-based reinforcement and extinction. We further evaluated whether this refinement mitigated response recurrence when all reinforcer deliveries ceased during an extinction-only disruptor phase. The refinement involved increasing the saliency of the contingency change from contingent reinforcement (during baseline) to time-based reinforcement by delivering different colored reinforcers during time-based reinforcement. Behavioral momentum theory predicts that increasing the discriminability of the change from variable-interval to variable-time reinforcement should lead to faster reductions in responding. We present data on four participants, three of whom displayed response patterns consistent with the predictions of behavioral momentum theory during time-based reinforcement. However, the participants showed more varied patterns of recurrent behavior during extinction. We discuss these results within a translational research framework focusing on strategies used to mitigate treatment relapse for severe destructive behavior, as time-based reinforcement is one of the most commonly prescribed interventions for destructive behavior displayed by individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2016 · doi:10.1002/jeab.225