Assessment and Treatment of Target Behavior Maintained by Social Avoidance.

Slocum et al. (2024) worked with five autistic children whose aggression was driven by wanting to get away from people.

The team first checked the function, then paired two tactics: they slowly brought adults closer while the child earned praise and small prizes for staying calm.

No one blocked the kids from leaving; instead, the room just felt safer bit by bit.

Four of the five children cut their aggressive or avoidant acts to near zero once the fading-plus-reinforcement package ran.

The fifth child improved only a little, showing the plan is strong but not magic.

Capio et al. (2013) used the same social-escape function but stopped all escape and paid kids with attention for nice behavior. Slocum keeps the DR core yet skips the extinction part, proving you can soften social cues instead of blocking them.

Briere et al. (2025) also blended DR with stimulus fading, but for nasal-swab cooperation, not aggression. Both studies hit 80–100 % success without escape extinction, so the package travels across topographies.

Repp et al. (1992) first showed that some kids act up when adults come close, not when they leave. Slocum gives those exact kids a friendly road map back into interaction.

If your client hits to make you back off, try inching closer only when the child is calm and immediately dropping a reinforcer. You skip the battle of blocking escape and still get four-out-of-five-level gains. Start with the adult at the door, move one step every few minutes, and keep praise flowing—no extra extinction needed.