What makes extinction work: an analysis of procedural form and function.
Extinction only works when you block the reinforcer shown by the functional analysis, no matter what the behavior looks like.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team ran a functional analysis on three kids with developmental delay.
Each child’s self-injury was kept going by a different reinforcer: attention, escape, or automatic sensory input.
They then tried three kinds of extinction in an ABAB design.
Only the extinction that matched the reinforcer found in the analysis was used each time.
What they found
Self-injury dropped only when the extinction procedure matched the reinforcer keeping it alive.
For example, when the behavior was escape-maintained, withholding escape cut the behavior.
Ignoring the child did nothing because escape, not attention, was the fuel.
How this fits with other research
Iwata et al. (1990) showed the same thing one year earlier with escape-only extinction, so the 1994 paper widened the rule to all three functions.
Kirkwood et al. (2021) repeated the idea 27 years later with feeding disorders and found escape extinction alone still works, proving the rule holds across topographies.
Cohen et al. (1993) looked like a contradiction: DRO without extinction failed for two kids.
The clash disappears when you see they were still giving attention during DRO, so the reinforcer was never fully withheld.
Why it matters
Before you write an extinction plan, run a quick functional analysis.
Pick the extinction type that blocks the reinforcer you found, not the one that “looks right.”
This single check saves weeks of useless ignoring or pointless escape removal and keeps your client safe from prolonged self-injury.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
We examined methods for determining how extinction should be applied to different functions of self-injurious behavior (SIB). Assessment data indicated that the head banging of 3 children with developmental disabilities was maintained by different reinforcement contingencies: One subject's SIB was positively reinforced by attention from adults, the 2nd subjects SIB was negatively reinforced by escape from educational tasks, and the 3rd subject's SIB appeared to be automatically reinforced or "self-stimulatory" in nature. Three functional variations of extinction--EXT (attention), EXT (escape), and EXT (sensory)--were evaluated, and each subject was exposed to at least two of these variations in reversal or multiple baseline designs. Reductions in SIB were observed only when implementation of "extinction" involved the discontinuation of reinforcement previously shown to be responsible for maintaining the behavior. These results highlight important differences among treatment techniques based on the same behavioral principle (extinction) when applied to topographically similar but functionally dissimilar responses, and further illustrate the practical implications of a functional analysis of behavior disorders for designing, selecting, and classifying therapeutic interventions.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1994 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1994.27-131