Treatment of escape-maintained aberrant behavior with escape extinction and predictable routines.

Two kids with developmental delay kept hitting and screaming to get out of tasks. The team first taught each child to match printed words to pictures in a quick stimulus-equivalence lesson. Then they compared two daily schedules: one showed the task names in words, the other used photos.

All sessions used escape extinction. The child had to finish the task no matter what. The researchers tracked problem behavior and how often the child followed the first instruction.

Both children acted out less and complied more when they used the text schedule. The photo schedule helped a little, but the word schedule won by a clear margin.

The brief time-delay training was enough for the kids to read their schedules without prompts.

Boyle et al. (2021) later slid an activity schedule into FCT thinning and also saw low problem behavior. Their work extends this 1994 finding by showing schedules can keep gains after you add communication responses.

Smith et al. (1997) sounds like a contradiction: they saw teachers lose fidelity when escape extinction made kids escalate. The difference is viewpoint. Turkkan (1994) tracked child behavior only; G et al. watched the adults. High child outbursts can punish staff even while the procedure still helps the child.

Hoyle et al. (2022) and Falcomata et al. (2012) moved the field forward by pairing schedules with FCT instead of pure extinction. They kept the schedule piece but swapped in a safer, staff-friendly intervention.

If you still use escape extinction, give the child a printed-word schedule after a quick matching lesson. It cuts problem behavior better than pictures and keeps compliance high. Watch your staff, though—if extinction turns tough, switch to FCT plus schedules as later studies did. Monday move: try a text schedule first; your session may run smoother for both you and the learner.