EFFECTS OF ALTERNATIVE RESPONSES ON BEHAVIOR EXPOSED TO NONCONTINGENT REINFORCEMENT JAVIER VIRUES-ORTEGA BRIAN A. IWATA TARA A. FAHMIE JILL M.

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1 JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS 213, 46, NUMBER 3(FALL 213) EFFECTS OF ALTERNATIVE RESPONSES ON BEHAVIOR EXPOSED TO NONCONTINGENT REINFORCEMENT JAVIER VIRUES-ORTEGA UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA AND ST. AMANT RESEARCH CENTRE BRIAN A. IWATA UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA TARA A. FAHMIE CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE AND JILL M. HARPER MELMARK NEW ENGLAND Noncontingent reinforcement (N) may decrease the frequency of behavior by either inducing satiation or terminating the response reinforcer contingency (extinction). Another possibility is that the target behavior is replaced by other behaviors maintained by preexisting contingencies. We conducted 2 experiments in which we allowed access to a target response and several alternatives. In Experiment 1, N, preceded by contingent reinforcement () for the target, produced a reduction in the target and an increase in the alternatives in 2 subjects with intellectual disabilities. To separate the effects of N from the availability of alternative responses, we presented conditions to 4 subjects in Experiment 2 with and without the availability of alternatives. The availability of alternatives decreased the target in only 1 subject. Subsequent manipulations showed that reductions in the target were solely a function of N for the other 3 subjects. Thus, response competition may have marginal effects on response suppression during N. Key words: noncontingent reinforcement, alternative response, preference assessment Noncontingent reinforcement (N), the delivery of reinforcers according to some response-independent schedule, has become a wellestablished treatment for behavior problems in individuals with developmental disabilities (Carr, Severtson, & Lepper, 29). Response suppression during N has been attributed primarily to either of two processes: satiation or extinction (Vollmer, Iwata, Zarcone, Smith, & Mazaleski, 1993). First, This study was funded in part by a visiting scholar award to the first author at the University of Florida from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (José Castillejo Mobility Program, BOE no. 267, p. 4611). Address correspondence to Javier Virués Ortega, University of Manitoba, Psychology Department, P518 Duff Roblin Bldg, 19 Dysart Rd., Winnipeg MB R3T, Canada ( javier.virues@ad.umanitoba.ca). doi: 1.12/jaba.61 frequent consumption of reinforcers may attenuate the behavior s establishing operation (satiation). Second, elimination of the response reinforcer contingency may produce extinction. Evidence consistent with the satiation hypothesis comes from several studies showing that N was effective in reducing problem behavior even when behavior continued to be reinforced, thereby eliminating extinction as a source of influence (Fischer, Iwata, & Mazaleski, 1997; Lalli, Casey, & Kates, 1997; Wallace, Iwata, Hanley, Thompson, & Roscoe, 212). Similarly, larger magnitudes or denser schedules of N, more likely to produce satiation than smaller magnitudes or thinner schedules, have been shown to be more effective in decreasing behavior in nonclinical (Carr, Bailey, Ecott, Lucker, & 63

2 64 JAVIER VIRUES-ORTEGA et al. Weil, 1998; Roscoe, Iwata, & Rand, 23) and clinical (Hagopian, Fisher, & Legacy, 1994) studies. Data supporting the extinction hypothesis come from studies in which thin schedules of N, unlikely to produce satiation, were effective in decreasing behavior (Hagopian, Toole, Long, Bowman, & Lieving, 24; Vollmer et al., 1993; Wallace et al., 212). A third hypothesis, which has been proposed less often, is that alternative responses facilitate reductions in the original target response during N. Although this hypothesis has not been tested directly, Roane, Fisher, and Sgro (21) observed in a task-demand context that one individual engaged in more in-seat and complaint behavior, and less problem behavior, when they delivered noncontingent positive reinforcers than when they did not. However, experimenters did not determine the function of problem behavior in that case study; thus, it was possible that N simply attenuated an establishing operation for escapemaintained behavior (Wilder, Normand, & Atwell, 25). Ecott and Critchfield (24) suggested a more explicit role for alternative responses. They proposed that when reinforcement for a target response changes from a contingent to a noncontingent schedule, the noncontingent schedule adventitiously reinforces alternative responses, which compete more effectively with the target response. It is unclear, however, why alternative responses would be more prone to adventitious reinforcement than the target response. If anything, the target response, having a recent history of contingent reinforcement, should be more susceptible to adventitious reinforcement effects. Thus, a simpler explanation for the influence of alternative responses is the elimination of response (reinforcer) competition: When a target response is no longer required to produce access to a reinforcer, as in the transition from contingent to noncontingent reinforcement, reinforcers available for alternative responses more heavily influence response allocation. Although the occurrence of alternative responses has been measured in a number of studies on N (Fisher, DeLeon, Rodriguez-Catter, & Keeney, 24; Fisher, O Connor, Kurtz, DeLeon, & Gotjen, 2; Goh, Iwata, & DeLeon, 2; Hagopian Crockett, van Stone, DeLeon, & Bowman, 2; Marcus & Vollmer, 1996; Piazza et al., 1998), the active role played by these responses is largely unknown because they were not manipulated as independent variables. Assuming that a reduction in the target behavior is observed under N, the alternative response account predicts a possible interaction effect between N and the availability of alternative responses: Lower rates of target responding under N would facilitate engagement in available alternatives. However, the availability of alternative responses per se as a distinct influence over target responding would need to be established in the absence of extinction and satiation influences. Thus, the alternative response account predicts that newly available alternative responses produce lower rates of target responding even though the target continues to be reinforced. The purpose of the current studies was to examine (a) changes in alternative responses during N (Experiments 1 and 2), and (b) changes in a target response under N as a function of the availability of alternative responses both combined with and independent of the influence of N (Experiment 2). EXPERIMENT 1 Experiment 1 was designed to determine the extent to which suppression of a target response during N was associated with an increase in the occurrence of an alternative response. Although this method of analysis does not permit one to conclude that increases in alternative responses actively contribute to the suppression of the target, the absence of change in alternative responses when a target response decreases under N renders further analyses unnecessary.

3 ALTERNATIVE RESPONSES AND N 65 Method Subjects and setting. Holly and Janice, 13- and 6-year-old girls, respectively, participated as subjects. Both had been diagnosed with intellectual disability and language impairment. Sessions were conducted in an empty classroom at the school they attended. Sessions lasted for 5 min and were conducted two to three times per week based on subject and experimenter availability. Response measurement and interobserver agreement. Edible items to be used as reinforcers were identified through formal preference assessments (multiple-stimulus without replacement format, DeLeon & Iwata, 1996, for Holly; pairedstimulus preference format, Fisher et al., 1992, for Janice). Interobserver agreement on subjects selections was assessed on 38% and 5% of the trials for Holly and Janice, respectively, and was calculated by dividing the number of scoring agreements between two observers by the number of trials. Percentage agreement for the preference assessment was 1% for both subjects. An arbitrary response, pressing a button mounted on a plastic panel, was selected as the target behavior for both subjects. We selected this response because it (a) was a discrete behavior that could be counted easily and (b) seemed to have some inherently reinforcing effects and, thus, its occurrence would be sensitive to experimental contingencies. Observers recorded the frequency of responses, and data were summarized as responses per minute. Three other responses were selected as alternatives to provide subjects with a range of choices. All responses involved engagement with preferred leisure items, which were identified based on results of a single-stimulus assessment (DeLeon, Iwata, Conners, & Wallace, 1999). A series of leisure items was presented one at a time for a 2-min trial, and items were selected if engagement (manual contact with the item) occurred for at least 1 min. A second observer scored duration of engagement independently on 1% of these trials. Agreement was calculated by dividing the smaller recorded duration by the larger and was 98% for Holly and 99% for Janice. Alternative items for each subject were identical except for their color: Holly s were a yellow, blue, or red plastic block toy; Janice s were a yellow, blue, or black and white car. Because engagement with these items was a variable-duration response, its occurrence during experimental sessions was recorded using a 1-s partial-interval procedure in which a response was scored if contact with an item occurred for at least 3 s. A second observer recorded data on target and alternative responses independently on 55% and 3% of Holly s and Janice s experimental sessions, respectively. Interobserver agreement for the target response was calculated by partitioning session time into 1-s intervals, dividing the smaller number of responses recorded in each interval by the larger number, and averaging these fractions across all intervals. Mean agreement was 97% (range, 9% to 1%) for Holly and 96% (range, 88% to 1%) for Janice. Interobserver agreement for alternative responses was calculated by dividing the number of agreement intervals (on item contact) by the total number of intervals. Mean agreement was 92% (range, 77% to 1%) for Holly and 86% (range, 73% to 98%) for Janice. Procedure and design. Prebaseline sessions were conducted in which the three leisure items and the target response were concurrently available. The purpose of these sessions was to insure that both subjects did, in fact, engage in approximately equal responding across alternatives and zero or low rates of target responses when no programmed consequences were delivered for engaging in any responses. Thus, interaction per se served as automatic reinforcement for engaging in alternative behavior. The following conditions were implemented during experimental sessions in a multiple baseline design across subjects. Target and alternative responses were available continuously during each session. Subjects could engage at any

4 66 JAVIER VIRUES-ORTEGA et al. time, alternately or simultaneously, in the target and the alternative responses. Contingent reinforcement (). An initial phase served as baseline. The purpose of this condition was to simulate one in which a problem behavior (in this case, the target) had a history of ongoing reinforcement. Following each instance of the target response, an experimenter delivered a small piece of a highly preferred food item (fixed-ratio [FR] 1 schedule). No consequences were delivered for engaging in alternative responses. Noncontingent reinforcement (N). An experimenter delivered a small piece of the edible item throughout the session on a variable-time (VT) 15-s schedule. No consequences were delivered for engaging in either the target or alternative responses. The N schedule was based on two criteria: It was sufficiently dense (a) to induce both extinction and satiation (e.g., Wallace et al., 212) and (b) to be unlikely to produce adventitious reinforcement. Results and Discussion Figure 1 shows results for Holly and Janice. When edible items were delivered for engaging in target responses during the (baseline) condition, subjects engaged in low (Holly) or moderate (Janice) rates of target responses. They also engaged in alternative responses, usually switching between target and alternative responses but occasionally engaging in both simultaneously. When edible items were delivered on a response-independent basis in the N condition, both subjects rates of target responding showed an immediate decrease and eventually disappeared completely. As target responding decreased, alternative responding increased slightly and maintained at somewhat higher levels than what were observed during the condition. Thus, results showed that when reinforcement for a target response changed from a contingent to a noncontingent schedule, as in the transition from baseline to treatment for problem behavior, target responding decreased, and alternative responding increased. The relation between target and alternative responses, however, remains unclear because the potential influences of N and target response availability were present simultaneously. One explanation for the current results is that target responding decreased as a function of N (via satiation or extinction) and that increased alternative responding simply reflected a change in response allocation when the target response was no longer necessary to access reinforcement. Another possibility, however, was that the availability of alternative responses contributed directly to observed decreases in target responding. Experiment 2 was designed to examine the effects of the availability of alternative responses and N (satiation, extinction, or both) as separate independent variables. EXPERIMENT 2 We first examined target responding under when alternative responses were and were not available. This arrangement allowed us to first observe the potential effects of alternative responses independent of those of N. If simply having the opportunity to engage in alternative responses decreased the target, there would be no need to examine the effects of N. If the availability of alternative responding per se had no effects on target responding, we then examined the effects of N when alternative responses were and were not available. This arrangement allowed us to determine the extent to which the availability of alternative responses interacted with the effects of N. Method Subjects and setting. Four subjects participated in Experiment 2. Craig was a 2-year-old man with an intellectual disability and language impairment. Adam was a 16-year-old boy with an intellectual disability. Cyril was a 19-year-old man with an intellectual disability. Janice, from

5 ALTERNATIVE RESPONSES AND N 67 TARGET (RESPONSES PER MINUTE) Holly Janice Alt Target N SESSIONS ALT (PERCENTAGE OF INTERVALS) Figure 1. Target and alternative responses (responses per minute and percentage of 1-s intervals, respectively) under conditions of contingent reinforcement for the target () and N during Experiment 1. ¼ contingent reinforcement; N ¼ noncontingent reinforcement; Alt ¼ alternative response. Experiment 1, also participated in the current study. Setting and scheduling details were the same as in Experiment 1. Response measurement and interobserver agreement. Edible items were identified based on a multiple-stimulus without replacement preference assessment (DeLeon & Iwata, 1996). Interobserver agreement (calculated in the same way as in Experiment 1) was assessed during 1% of assessment trials and was 1% for all subjects. The target response for all subjects consisted of touching a card located on a table in front of the subject. Observers recorded the frequency of card touches, and data were summarized as responses per minute. Alternative responses were identified in the same manner as described in Experiment 1 (agreement for duration of engagement during the preference assessment was 1% for all subjects). Craig s alternative items were three different colored toy cars; Adam s were three different colors of Play-doh, Cyril s were three different colored Lego blocks, and Janice s were three different colored action figures. When target and alternative responses were concurrently available, participants could engage in either of the two or in both responses simultaneously. During experimental sessions, we collected data on target and alternative responses following the procedures described in Experiment 1. Interobserver agreement was assessed for 46%, 29%, 43%, and 42% of sessions for Craig, Adam, Cyril, and Janice, respectively. Mean agreement for target responses was 96% (range, 91% to 1%) for Craig, 94% (range, 82% to 1%) for Adam, 95% (range, 81% to 1%) for Cyril, and 96% (range, 8% to 1%) for Janice. Mean agreement for alternative responses was 81%

6 68 JAVIER VIRUES-ORTEGA et al. (range, 7% to 9%) for Craig, 99% (range, 9% to 1%) for Adam, 1% for Cyril, and 92% (range, 7% to 1%) for Janice. Procedure and design. Experiment 2 consisted of four conditions that were alternated in reversal designs. As described for Experiment 1, prebaseline sessions were conducted to determine that individuals engaged in approximately equal responding across alternatives and zero or low rates of target responses in the absence of programmed consequences for any response. Contingent reinforcement without alternatives ( no alt). The target response was available. The experimenter delivered a small piece of the preferred edible item contingent on each target response. Alternative items were not present during these sessions. Contingent reinforcement with alternatives ( plus alt). This condition was identical to the preceding one, except that alternative items were available for the duration of the session. If the target response decreased simply as a function of the presence of alternative responses, no additional conditions were conducted. If no reduction in the target response was observed during the plus alt condition, additional conditions were implemented to examine separately the effects of N and the availability of alternative responses. Noncontingent reinforcement without alternatives (N no alt). This condition was identical to the no alt condition, except that the experimenter delivered an edible item according to a VT 15-s schedule, noncontingently. The VT 15-s schedule was used for all N conditions. Noncontingent reinforcement with alternatives (N plus alt). This condition was identical to N no alt, except that alternative responses were available throughout the session. Results and Discussion Figure 2 shows results for Craig, Adam, Cyril, and Janice. Craig s data showed that the mere availability of alternative responses ( plus alt condition) was associated with large decreases in his target response and indicate that alternative responses actively contributed to target-response suppression. The response reinforcer relation for the target remained unchanged (), so its reduction cannot be attributed to extinction. Satiation to the edible reinforcer that maintained the target response also was unlikely because alternative responses were maintained by a different source of reinforcement. That is, automatic reinforcement derived from engaging in alternative responses would be unlikely to produce satiation to the edible reinforcers that maintained the target. Finally, adventitious reinforcement of alternative responses was impossible because the FR 1 schedule of reinforcement for the target response remained constant. By contrast, results for Adam, Cyril, and Janice showed that the availability of alternative responses had little or no effect on their engagement in the target response. When we introduced the alternative responses ( plus alt), Adam and Janice engaged in high (Adam) or moderate (Janice) levels of alternative responding, but their rates of target responding remained unchanged. Cyril, however, never engaged in alternative responses. We then used the plus alt condition as a baseline for evaluating the effects of N plus alt. In all three cases, N plus alt resulted in large reductions in target responding, which we replicated in the subsequent plus alt! N plus alt sequence. To eliminate the potential influence of alternative responding, we then examined the sole effects of N in a final reversal design: N no alt! no alt! N no alt, and observed decreases in target responding during the N conditions. Thus, results of this series of conditions indicated that the availability of alternative responses had no effect on Adam s, Cyril s, and Janice s target responding, either independent of or combined with N, but that N produced decreases in target responding independent of alternative responses.

7 ALTERNATIVE RESPONSES AND N Craig Target + Alt Alt TARGET (RESPONSES PER MINUTE) Adam Cyril Janice N N N N N N N N N N N N ALT (PERCENTAGE OF INTERVALS) SESSIONS Figure 2. Target and alternative responses (responses per minute and percentage of 1-s intervals, respectively) under varied combinations of reinforcement ( vs. N) and the availability of alternative responses (þalt vs. No Alt) during Experiment 2. ¼ contingent reinforcement; N ¼ noncontingent reinforcement; Alt ¼ alternative response.

8 61 JAVIER VIRUES-ORTEGA et al. GENERAL DISCUSSION The suppressive effect of N on a previously reinforced target response has been described in terms of both satiation and extinction. Little is known, however, about the effects of N on responses other than the target because alternative responding has not often been measured, but these other responses can interact with the target in at least two ways. First, in addition to having an effect on the target response, N may somehow influence the occurrence of alternative behavior. For instance, the noncontingent delivery of arbitrary reinforcers can suppress behavior maintained by other reinforcers (Fischer et al., 1997; Hanley, Piazza, & Fisher, 1997). Second, the availability of alternative behavior may influence the occurrence of the target independent of the delivery of reinforcement, contingent or otherwise. That is, the availability of alternative responses (associated with other programmed or unprogrammed reinforcers) may alter response allocation by way of reinforcer competition (see discussion by Hagopian et al., 2). Experiment 1 served as an initial test of our procedures and showed that the transition from to N for a target response was associated not only with decreases in the target but also with increases in alternative responding. Although the simplest explanation for those results is that alternative responding simply increased because more time was available to engage in it when the target response decreased, the possibility that alternative responding contributed to the suppressive effect of N on the target response could not be ruled out. We designed Experiment 2 to examine further the influence of alternative responding by first superimposing the availability of alterative responding on a baseline of contingent reinforcement for the target () in a reversal design (no alt! alt! no alt! alt). Results for Craig showed that alternative responding suppressed target responding independent of the effects of. In other words, given access to one reinforcer for engaging in a target response, Craig s response allocation shifted toward different reinforcers when they became available for engaging in a different response. When we examined the influence of alternative responding more directly in Experiment 2, only one of the four subjects (Craig) showed a decrease in target responding solely as a function of engagement with alternatives during the plus alt condition. The remaining three subjects (Adam, Cyril, and Janice) later showed decreases in target responding when we implemented N (N plus alt). To separate the effects of N on the target from those of alternative responding, we subsequently implemented N no alt. Results from this condition showed that alternative responding played no role in the suppression of target responding for any of the three subjects. For the subject whose target responding decreased in the presence of alternatives, results suggested that the reinforcers produced by engagement with the alternative items were simply preferred over those delivered contingent on the target response. Thus, response competition might contribute to an N effect only when alternative responses produce reinforcers that are more potent than those previously delivered for target responses; competition of this sort may be evident even under conditions for the target, as we observed for Craig. The opposite situation likely existed for the other three subjects for whom access to edible items effectively displaced engagement with the alternatives. It is possible that different effects would be observed had the reinforcers been switched. That is, greater response competition may have occurred if the target produced access to leisure items as reinforcement, whereas the alternative response produced access to edible items. Edible items are often preferred over other forms of reinforcement by individuals with intellectual disabilities (Bojak & Carr, 1999; DeLeon, Iwata, & Roscoe, 1997). Thus, the

9 ALTERNATIVE RESPONSES AND N 611 findings observed in the presence of alternative responses may be entirely reinforcer dependent (Hagopian et al., 2). Our results also may have been influenced by the N schedule that we used. A thinner schedule may have been easier to implement and therefore more practical in application. However, satiation may have been less likely under a thinner schedule, either delaying or limiting the magnitude of the effects observed (e.g., Hagopian et al., 1994). Of course, it is still possible that other unprogrammed (and unobserved) alternative responses may influence the occurrence of a target response. While piloting procedures for the present study, we videotaped sessions to record unprogrammed alternative responses retrospectively. However, these events were so infrequent that we ceased taking data. Subjects continued to engage sporadically in unprogrammed alternative responses, but these occurred at very low frequencies throughout the study. Replication of this work or extension to the examination of problem behavior under more naturalistic conditions may require continuous monitoring of all activity to identify the emergence of new responses under N, particularly among individuals with multiple problem behaviors. Even if such responses were to emerge, their relation to target-response suppression would be unclear. For example, Ecott and Critchfield (24) suggested that N produces adventitious reinforcement of the alternative responses. However, the data they presented involved manipulation of the reinforcement schedule for the target ( to N); the extent to which noncontingent reinforcer deliveries influenced alternative responding was unknown. We retrospectively estimated the probability of adventitious reinforcement of alternative responses during N as the relation between the baseline probability of alternative responses ( plus alt) and the probability of reinforcement during N (N plus alt). The probability of the reinforcer was lower than the probability of alternatives for all subjects except Cyril, who never engaged in the alternatives (adventitious reinforcement was not possible). The probability of the intersection of both events (alternative response and time-dependent delivery of the reinforcer) was low for all subjects (.5), suggesting that adventitious reinforcement was unlikely. A more direct method for examining adventitious reinforcement effects would consist of programming different proportions of alternative response reinforcer contiguity, so that adventitious reinforcement could be manipulated directly as an independent variable. REFERENCES Bojak, S. L., & Carr, J. E. (1999). On the displacement of leisure items by food during multiple-stimulus preference assessments. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 32, doi: 1.191/jaba Carr, J. E., Bailey, J. S., Ecott, C. L., Lucker, K. D., & Weil, T. M. (1998). On the effects of noncontingent delivery of differing magnitudes of reinforcement. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 31, doi: 1.191/ jaba Carr, J. E., Severtson, J. M., & Lepper, T. L. (29). Noncontingent reinforcement is an empirically supported treatment for problem behavior exhibited by individuals with developmental disabilities. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 3, doi: 1.116/j. ridd DeLeon, I. G., & Iwata, B. A. (1996). Evaluation of a multiple-stimulus presentation format for assessing reinforcer preferences. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 29, doi: 1.191/jaba DeLeon, I. G., Iwata, B. A., Conners, J., & Wallace, M. D. (1999). Examination of ambiguous stimulus preferences with duration-based measures. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 32, doi: 1.191/ jaba DeLeon, I. G., Iwata, B. A., & Roscoe, E. M. (1997). Displacement of leisure reinforcers by food during preference assessments. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 3, doi: 1.191/jaba Ecott, C. L., & Critchfield, T. S. (24). Noncontingent reinforcement, alternative reinforcement, and the matching law: A laboratory demonstration. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 37, doi: 1.191/ jaba Fischer, S. M., Iwata, B. A., & Mazaleski, J. L. (1997). Noncontingent delivery of arbitrary reinforcers as treatment for self-injurious behavior. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 3, doi: 1.191/ jaba

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