Using multiple schedules during functional communication training to promote rapid transfer of treatment effects.
Colored signals during FCT let kids transfer near-zero problem behavior to new places and staff immediately.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Three children learned to ask for a break instead of hitting.
The team added colored cards: green card meant breaks were available, red card meant no breaks.
Therapists then moved the kids to new rooms and new staff to see if the good behavior would travel.
What they found
Problem behavior stayed near zero the moment the cards appeared in each new place.
Kids used the break request only when the green card was showing.
No extra teaching was needed for the new therapists or rooms.
How this fits with other research
Hastings et al. (2001) first showed that colored signals during FCT keep problem behavior low.
Whiting et al. (2015) now shows those same signals also give you instant transfer across people and places.
Muething et al. (2021) and Briggs et al. (2018) later saw resurgence in most of their cases using the same setup.
The difference: W’s team moved to new settings right away, while the later studies stayed in the same room and kept thinning thinner.
Why it matters
You can skip slow, step-by-step thinning.
Put a green card on the table when reinforcement is available, flip it to red when it is not, and practice in two or three settings on day one.
Your client learns the rule once, and the behavior holds with new teachers, new rooms, even at home.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Multiple schedules with signaled periods of reinforcement and extinction have been used to thin reinforcement schedules during functional communication training (FCT) to make the intervention more practical for parents and teachers. We evaluated whether these signals would also facilitate rapid transfer of treatment effects across settings and therapists. With 2 children, we conducted FCT in the context of mixed (baseline) and multiple (treatment) schedules introduced across settings or therapists using a multiple baseline design. Results indicated that when the multiple schedules were introduced, the functional communication response came under rapid discriminative control, and problem behavior remained at near-zero rates. We extended these findings with another individual by using a more traditional baseline in which problem behavior produced reinforcement. Results replicated those of the previous participants and showed rapid reductions in problem behavior when multiple schedules were implemented across settings.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 2015 · doi:10.1002/jaba.254