On the establishing and reinforcing effects of termination of demands for destructive behavior maintained by positive and negative reinforcement.

The team looked at what happens when you give a break for compliance. They wanted to see if the break itself could accidentally keep destructive behavior alive.

One child got escape extinction added later. The rest kept the break-for-compliance rule.

Breaks did not shrink destructive behavior. The break also gave attention, so the problem kept paying off two ways.

Escape extinction was tried on one child, but the paper gives few details. The overall picture stayed muddy.

Kahng et al. (1999) ran a similar test the next year. They pitted edible praise against break time. Edibles won big — compliance rose and escape behavior dropped. Their clear win sharpens the warning in Gutierrez et al. (1998): breaks alone are weak medicine.

Emerson et al. (2007) later paired time-out with escape extinction. All four kids showed strong compliance gains. Their tidy success shows that when you do add escape extinction, you need to do it fully, not the brief probe seen here.

Briggs et al. (2019) skipped extinction altogether. They used bigger, better reinforcers for compliance and still cut destructive behavior. Their 2019 data tell us you can dodge the extinction battle if you make the alternative good enough.

Before you hand out a break for compliance, test why the child wants the break. If the break also gives face-time, you may feed the very behavior you want to stop. Start with strong positive reinforcers first, and save escape extinction for later if needed.