The effects of noncontingent and contingent attention for self-injury, manding, and collateral responses.
Attention-based self-injury travels in a pack with other ‘look at me’ responses, so pick FCT mands that look nothing like the problem.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team compared two kinds of attention for kids who hurt themselves to get adult looks. One group got attention only after self-injury. The other got the same amount of attention on a fixed time, no matter what they did.
They also watched what happened to other behaviors like babbling, reaching, and crying. The goal was to see if these behaviors rise and fall together when attention is the prize.
What they found
When attention came only after self-injury, that behavior stayed strong. When attention came no matter what, self-injury dropped, but babbling and reaching also faded.
The results show these behaviors act like one big package. If you pick a mand that looks a lot like the old problem, you may just swap one topographies for another.
How this fits with other research
Pitchford et al. (2019) looked at later SIB studies and saw weaker effects than the classic era. Their survey reminds us that attention is not always the main driver today; automatic reinforcement now shows up more often.
May (2019) found that differential attention beat simple proximity for keeping kids on task. Both papers back the same rule: how you deliver the reinforcer matters as much as the amount.
McCabe et al. (2025) warn that blended contingencies rarely show true synergy. Their point lines up here: test each pathway alone before you bundle mands and attention.
Why it matters
Before you pick a replacement mand, watch if it has ever been paired with the problem. If the child used to babble right before head-hits, teaching ‘talk to me’ may just give you a polite version of the same burst. Run a quick test: deliver attention non-contingently and see which behaviors drop together. Then pick a mand that moves the child’s body, voice, or location in a brand-new way.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Test non-contingent attention for ten minutes, note which prosocial behaviors dip with the SIB, then choose a mand outside that set.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
To date, most functional analysis studies have focused on the effects of treatment contingencies on specific targeted aberrant and alternative responses. In the current investigation, the main and collateral effects of the assessment and treatment of attention-maintained self-injury were assessed. Specifically, we evaluated the effects of noncontingent and contingent social attention on four categories of behavior: self-injury, a novel mand, preexisting prosocial responses (e.g., babbling and reaching out), and other aberrant responses (i.e., aggression and destruction). Results suggested that self-injury, prosocial responses, and other aberrant behaviors were within the same functional response class. Possible impact of these results when selecting mands for functional communication training is discussed.
Behavior modification, 1998 · doi:10.1177/01454455980224002