EFFECTS OF TREATMENT INTEGRITY FAILURES DURING DIFFERENTIAL REINFORCEMENT OF ALTERNATIVE BEHAVIOR: A TRANSLATIONAL MODEL

TLDR

Differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA) is widely used to treat problem behavior, and prior research indicates it is robust, yet the impact of specific integrity failures has not been examined. The study aimed to assess how two kinds of treatment integrity failures affect DRA outcomes, first in a human operant paradigm and then in a school setting with children with disabilities. Researchers conducted a human operant experiment followed by two additional studies that replicated the findings in real‑world school settings. Results showed that reinforcing problem behavior was more harmful than merely omitting reinforcement of appropriate behavior, and that the order of conditions influenced outcomes; these effects were replicated in subsequent school‑based experiments.

Abstract

Differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA) is used frequently as a treatment for problem behavior. Previous studies on treatment integrity failures during DRA suggest that the intervention is robust, but research has not yet investigated the effects of different types of integrity failures. We examined the effects of two types of integrity failures on DRA, starting with a human operant procedure and extending the results to children with disabilities in a school setting. Human operant results (Experiment 1) showed that conditions involving reinforcement for problem behavior were more detrimental than failing to reinforce appropriate behavior alone, and that condition order affected the results. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated the effects of combined errors and sequence effects during actual treatment implementation.