Reinforcement schedule thinning following treatment with functional communication training.
Signal your thinning periods—multiple schedules keep problem behavior low without killing the FCT response.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Two kids got FCT first. They learned to ask for toys instead of hitting.
Next the team added schedule thinning. They used multiple schedules with clear signals. A green card meant 'ask now and get it.' A red card meant 'ask but no toy.'
What they found
Problem behavior stayed near zero. The kids still asked for toys at good times. Reinforcement dropped to one minute out of every five.
The signals let them know when asking would work. That kept the new skill strong.
How this fits with other research
Fuhrman et al. (2016) later showed the same signals cut resurgence when extinction returned. Capio et al. (2013) skipped gradual steps and jumped straight to lean schedules—problem behavior still stayed low.
Muething et al. (2021) saw the opposite: resurgence in four of ten thinning steps. The difference? They used tougher extinction probes and kids with longer histories of reinforcement.
Briggs et al. (2018) and Mitteer et al. (2022) both report resurgence in about 70% of cases. Their data say 'expect relapse,' while P et al. say 'near-zero relapse.' The clash comes from how hard you test and how long the child has been reinforced for problem behavior.
Why it matters
Use signaled multiple schedules after FCT. Green card for reinforcement, red card for extinction. Start lean early—four minutes no toys, one minute toys. Watch for resurgence when you probe or shift contexts. If spikes show, run a quick booster FCT session then resume the same signals.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
We evaluated four methods for increasing the practicality of functional communication training (FCT) by decreasing the frequency of reinforcement for alternative behavior. Three participants whose problem behaviors were maintained by positive reinforcement were treated successfully with FCT in which reinforcement for alternative behavior was initially delivered on fixed-ratio (FR) 1 schedules. One participant was then exposed to increasing delays to reinforcement under FR 1, a graduated fixed-interval (FI) schedule, and a graduated multiple-schedule arrangement in which signaled periods of reinforcement and extinction were alternated. Results showed that (a) increasing delays resulted in extinction of the alternative behavior, (b) the FI schedule produced undesirably high rates of the alternative behavior, and (c) the multiple schedule resulted in moderate and stable levels of the alternative behavior as the duration of the extinction component was increased. The other 2 participants were exposed to graduated mixed-schedule (unsignaled alternation between reinforcement and extinction components) and multiple-schedule (signaled alternation between reinforcement and extinction components) arrangements in which the durations of the reinforcement and extinction components were modified. Results obtained for these 2 participants indicated that the use of discriminative stimuli in the multiple schedule facilitated reinforcement schedule thinning. Upon completion of treatment, problem behavior remained low (or at zero), whereas alternative behavior was maintained as well as differentiated during a multiple-schedule arrangement consisting of a 4-min extinction period followed by a 1-min reinforcement period.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 2001 · doi:10.1901/jaba.2001.34-17