Experimental analysis of response covariation among compliant and inappropriate behaviors.
Reinforce compliance and watch problem behavior drop; punish problem behavior and watch compliance rise.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team watched one child in a classroom. They tracked each time the child followed an adult request. They also tracked each time the child whined, yelled, or refused.
Next they changed the rules. Sometimes they praised and gave tokens only for compliance. Other times they gave time-out only for problem behavior. They kept counting both kinds of acts to see if changing one would change the other.
What they found
When praise and tokens were given for compliance, problem behavior fell. When time-out was given for problem behavior, compliance rose.
The two behaviors moved like a seesaw. Push one side down and the other side went up. The link held every time the rules switched.
How this fits with other research
Fullana et al. (2007) later showed the same seesaw in preschoolers. They proved the flip happens because kids escape tasks they dislike.
Carr et al. (1985) used the rule in therapy. They paired hard tasks with favorite toys. Tantrums dropped and compliance jumped, just as Emmelkamp et al. (1986) predicted.
Wilder et al. (2020) found the link still holds in children with autism. When three-step prompting alone failed, adding reinforcement for the first prompt lifted compliance and cut refusal.
Why it matters
You do not need to run two separate plans. Strengthen compliance and problem behavior will fall, or weaken problem behavior and compliance will rise. Pick the response that is easier to track or safer to change, then watch both sides of the seesaw.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Reliable changes in a variety of behaviors, or classes of behaviors, when only one is manipulated experimentally, have demonstrated that even topographically dissimilar responses can be functionally related. We investigated such a relationship between topographically different child behaviors (compliance and inappropriate activities) by using a methodology that tests for response covariation. Five conditions were provided to sequentially increase and decrease first one and then the other of these behaviors, with the degree of covariation between the two behaviors (i.e., the relationship between changes in the targeted and nontargeted behaviors) being the finding of interest. Results showed that, regardless of the intervention used, the behavior targeted, or the direction manipulated, the nontargeted behavior reliably covaried inversely with the targeted one. The findings have immediate relevance to the clinical treatment of multiple behavior problems exhibited by children. Furthermore, the study of relationships between responses and the processes underlying these relationships can have important implications for understanding the complexity characteristic of human behavior not yet analyzed by behavioral research.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1986 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1986.19-241