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Basic and retrospective translational research has shown that the magnitude of resurgence is determined by the size of the decrease in alternative reinforcement, with larger decreases producing more resurgence. However, this finding has not been evaluated prospectively with a clinical population. In Experiment 1, five participants experienced a fixed progression of reinforcement schedule‐thinning steps during treatment of their destructive behavior. Resurgence occurred infrequently across steps and participants, and when resurgence did occur, its clinical meaningfulness was often minimal. In Experiment 2, five new participants experienced these same schedule‐thinning steps but in a counterbalanced order. Resurgence occurred most often and was generally largest with larger decreases in alternative reinforcement programmed earlier in the evaluation. Large decreases in alternative reinforcement may be more problematic clinically when they occur earlier in treatment. Whether larger transitions can be recommended in the clinic following the success of smaller ones will require additional research.

Incorporating literature into practice can help behavior analysts provide better services and achieve better outcomes. In addition, behavior analysts have an ethical obligation to remain current with the scholarly literature and to use it to inform services. Despite the merits of maintaining regular contact with the published literature, barriers exist to doing so. In this tutorial, we present a system that was created for a human service agency to increase practitioner access to the scholarly literature. The system consisted of an electronic search request form, a literature team, and a liaison. We present 7 years of data including the frequency of use, topics of interest, and other noteworthy patterns of submitter responding. We discuss the value of this type of system, limitations of its design, and considerations for practitioners who may wish to implement a similar system in their agency. We discuss modifications that could be made to fit organizations of diverse sizes and with different resources, while presenting ideas for improvement and expansion of the system.

Severe challenging behaviors, such as aggression and self-injurious behavior, have a high comorbidity with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; Hill et al., 2014; Soke et al., 2016). Although we have effective assessment and treatment procedures for severe challenging behavior, the relapse of severe challenging behavior following effective treatment is highly prevalent (Briggs et al., 2018; Falligant et al., 2022; Haney et al., 2022; Muething et al., 2021). Effective in 2025, the Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BACB) Test Content Outline (TCO; 6th ed.) includes a task-item requirement for Board Certified Behavior Analysts to plan for and attempt to mitigate possible relapse (BACB, 2022). Thus, it is important for practitioners to understand the variables that impact relapse of severe challenging behavior, and it is critical that they have access to tools to help them in preparing for and reacting to relapse in practice. The purpose of the current paper is to provide (a) a consumable framework on relapse for practitioners and (b) considerations for practitioners on managing relapse when it occurs.

Supervision has been a popular topic of study by behavior analysts for the last decade. This popularity came about after several hallmark articles were published and key events in our profession enhanced clarity regarding how much impact supervision can have on important variables such as the quality of behavior-analytic service delivery, patient outcomes, staff satisfaction, and level of staff burnout. Despite the increase in the volume of supervision literature, few articles have provided concrete recommendations for how to objectively evaluate supervisory behaviors in practice. In this tutorial, we share how we developed a supervision assessment calculator and tested its efficacy to evaluate supervisory behaviors in our practice. We tested the calculator with mock videos, and compared scores from independent raters to determine if the calculator could be used reliability in practice. We make recommendations for behavior analysts who wish to create objective scoring criteria for supervision in their own practice, and ways in which resources like this can be used to enhance the quality of supervision.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can struggle to acquire social, communication, and safety skills. Many of these skills can be targeted in individualized behavior analytic instruction. However, some skills can be challenging to teach given the difficulties associated with reconstructing a real-world scenario within a learning session. Virtual reality (VR) has emerged as a promising technology that can help people with ASD practice these types of skills in an immersive environment. VR is an emerging technology, and more research is needed to determine its efficacy as well as its impact on variables such as client indices of happiness and social validity. In this study, we successfully taught three children with ASD three different skills using a VR treatment package that consisted of VR, prompts, and reinforcement. Prior to teaching these skills, we included a cooperation phase with the intent to increase acceptance of VR equipment as needed. We found that each of the three participants accepted the equipment and VR sessions without the need for additional training. In all cases, the skills the participants acquired in the VR platform were maintained and generalized to the natural environment. Participants demonstrated indices of happiness when engaged with the VR software and parents and clinical staff ranked the VR software positively. Results are discussed in terms of the use of the VR treatment package in intervention and future research for similar technologies.

Behavioral momentum theory (BMT) suggests that resurgence of destructive behavior may be at least partly determined by the rate of alternative reinforcement, with lean schedules of reinforcement producing less resurgence than dense schedules. Findings from basic and translational studies have been mixed, and the effects of alternative reinforcement rate on resurgence remain unclear. In the current study, we conducted a within‐subject evaluation of resurgence during extinction with four children following functional communication training using dense and lean (BMT‐informed) schedules of alternative reinforcement. We observed no reliable differences in resurgence across the dense and lean conditions. We discuss implications of these findings in relation to future research using quantitative analyses to evaluate the relative effects of alternative reinforcement rate and other BMT‐based strategies for mitigating resurgence in applied settings.

Relapse following the successful treatment of problem behavior can increase the likelihood of injury and the need for more intensive care. Current research offers some predictions of how treatment procedures may contribute to relapse, and conversely, how the risk of relapse can be mitigated. This review describes relapse‐mitigation procedures with varying levels of support, the quantitative models that have influenced the research on relapse mitigation, different experimental methods for measuring relapse mitigation, and directions for future research. We propose that by viewing the implementation of relapse‐mitigation procedures as a means of producing behavioral inoculation, clinicians are placed in the proactive and intentional role of exposing their client's behavior to an array of reinforcement and stimulus conditions during treatment with the goal of decreasing the detrimental impact of future treatment challenges.

Ethical behavior is operant behavior, evoked and maintained by environmental variables; as such, it can be taught. Behavior analysts have focused on effective ways to teach and establish ethical behavior in both individual practitioners and within organizations. Teaching people to notice ethical issues in their environment is an important first step in promoting ethical discussions and decision making. In 2022, the Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB) issued two revised ethics codes—one for behavior analysts and one for registered behavior technicians (RBTs). In the current article, we expand upon the work of LeBlanc et al. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 13(4), 905–913, (2020) by updating an Ethics Network and hotline submission form within a human service agency to reflect both new codes of ethics. We provide data for the first 7 months of the updated system and analyze the data for common themes. We detail the updates to our system for readers wishing to create similar infrastructure in other organizations.

Translation of promising procedures for mitigating treatment relapse has received considerable attention recently from researchers across the basic–applied continuum. One procedure that has demonstrated mixed support involves increasing the duration of treatment as a strategy for blunting resurgence. In a recent translational study, Greer et al. (2020) failed to detect a mitigation effect of increased treatment duration on the resurgence of destructive behavior. However, design limitations may have been responsible. The present study corrected these limitations by (a) employing a sequential design to decrease the possibility of multiple‐treatment interference, (b) evaluating more treatment durations, (c) arranging treatments of fixed durations, and (d) conducting treatments of more extreme duration in a different clinical sample. Despite these improvements in experimental rigor and the testing of more extreme boundary conditions, the present study also failed to detect a mitigation effect of increased treatment duration. Likely explanations are discussed.

Resurgence following expanded-operant treatments (i.e., increasing the number or variability of alternative responses to problem behavior) has been the focus of numerous studies over the last 5 years. Researchers have evaluated several techniques for expanding the operant such as serial-, lag-, and concurrent-training procedures. Given the increasing number of recent studies on the topic, the various forms of training used, and the variability in outcomes, it is critical to review this area of research and identify future directions. Our brief review identified 10 published studies and eight unpublished theses or dissertations on this topic; however, only 3 published studies directly evaluated expanded-operant treatments as a strategy for relapse mitigation. All three studies evaluated serial-training procedures, and results across the studies were inconsistent. We summarize the findings of each study and provide recommendations for future research.

Although much has been written on the importance of translational research for bridging the continuum of basic science to clinical practice, few authors have described how such work can be carried out practically when working with patient populations in the context of ongoing clinical service delivery, where the priorities for patient care can sometimes conflict with the methods and goals of translational research. In this article, we explore some of the considerations for conducting this type of work while balancing clinical responsibilities that ensure high-quality patient care. We also discuss strategies we have found to jointly facilitate translational research and improve routine, clinical service delivery. A primary goal of this article is to encourage others working in applied settings to contribute to the increasingly important role that translational research plays in our science and practice by helping to better characterize and potentially lessen or remove barriers that may have impeded such investigations in the past.

Despite the effectiveness of function‐based treatments, most clinicians do not conduct functional analyses (FA). The time required to conduct an FA is a major barrier preventing their use. One way to increase FA efficiency is to discontinue the analysis as soon as it has produced clear results. Saini et al. (2018) evaluated a structured procedure for ongoing‐visual inspection of FAs and found that it produced accurate interpretations while averaging 40% fewer sessions than author interpretation. This study evaluated the efficacy of an e‐learning module for training registered behavior technicians (RBTs) to implement ongoing visual inspection of FAs. Following training, 5 of the 6 participants showed mastery of ongoing visual inspection, and the final participant did so with the addition of supplemental procedures. We discuss how this training may increase the efficiency of FAs by teaching individuals who are less experienced in FA methodology when to seek supervision from a supervising Board Certified Behavior Analyst® (BCBA).

Results of several recent translational studies have suggested that correlating contextual or discriminative stimuli with the delivery and withholding of reinforcement for the functional communication response (FCR) may mitigate resurgence of destructive behavior, but few, if any, have isolated the effects of those stimuli. In the present study, we first trained the FCR, brought it under stimulus control of a multiple schedule, and thinned its reinforcement schedule in one stimulus context. Next, we conducted resurgence evaluations (i.e., baseline, functional communication training [FCT], extinction challenge) in two novel contexts to test the effects of the discriminative stimuli on resurgence. We programmed one context to include the (a) SDduring the FCT phase to signal the availability of reinforcement for the FCR and (b) SΔduring a subsequent extinction challenge to signal the unavailability of reinforcement for the FCR. The other context did not include the SDduring the FCT phase, nor the SΔduring the extinction challenge. We expected to see greater persistence of the FCR in the context that included the SDduring FCT and less persistence of the FCR and less resurgence of destructive behavior in the context that included the SΔduring the extinction challenge. Obtained results confirmed this latter prediction, but we observed no reliable difference when the SDwas present or absent during the FCT phase. Our results have relevance for practitioners in that they provide further empirical support for the use of discriminative stimuli when treating destructive behavior.

Quantitative models of resurgence (e.g., Behavioral Momentum Theory, Resurgence as Choice) suggest that resurgence is partly a function of the duration of extinction exposure, with longer histories of extinction producing less resurgence. This prediction is supported by some laboratory research and has been partially supported by clinical translations that did not isolate the effects of extinction exposure prior to testing for resurgence. The degree to which different histories of extinction impact the likelihood of treatment relapse in therapeutic applications of differential reinforcement is of great interest to the clinical community, including insurance carriers and other financial providers. In the present study, we isolated the effects of extinction history for severe destructive behavior across 6 participants referred for treatment services and examined resurgence of destructive behavior when alternative reinforcement terminated. Our within‐subject evaluation showed no difference in the level of resurgence or persistence of destructive behavior following short and long exposures to differential reinforcement with extinction. We discuss our failure to replicate in relation to experimental‐design considerations for investigating this and other relapse phenomena in future research with clinical populations.

Concepts from behavioral momentum theory, along with some empirical findings, suggest that the rate of baseline reinforcement may contribute to the relapse of severe destructive behavior. With seven children who engaged in destructive behavior, we tested this hypothesis in the context of functional communication training by comparing the effects of different baseline reinforcement rates on resurgence during a treatment challenge (i.e., extinction). We observed convincing resurgence of destructive behavior in four of seven participants, and we observed more resurgence in the condition associated with high‐rate baseline reinforcement (i.e., variable‐interval 2 s in Experiment 1 or fixed‐ratio 1 in Experiment 2) compared to a low‐rate baseline reinforcement condition. We discuss the implications of these results relative to schedules of reinforcement in the treatment of destructive behavior and strategies to mitigate resurgence in clinical settings.

Arranging periods in which requests for reinforcement are denied in a multiple schedule may result in increased destructive behavior during these periods for individuals who receive functional communication training (FCT) as treatment for severe destructive behavior. Providing access to competing activities during periods of reinforcer unavailability has been shown to minimize destructive behavior. We evaluated methods to identify effective competing activities for use when thinning reinforcement availability in a multiple schedule and compared competing activities embedded within the multiple schedule using an alternating‐treatments design. Results suggested at least one competing activity facilitated favorable treatment outcomes for each participant. We discuss building on this empirical approach to identify effective competing activities for use during reinforcement schedule thinning.

The resurgence of destructive behavior can occur during functional communication training (FCT) if the alternative response contacts a challenge (e.g., extinction). Behavioral momentum theory (BMT) suggests that refinements to FCT could mitigate resurgence of destructive behavior during periods of extinction. Following a functional analysis and treatment with FCT, we combined three refinements to FCT (i.e., the use of a lean schedule of reinforcement for destructive behavior during baseline, a lean schedule for the alternative response during FCT, and an increase in the duration of treatment) and compared the magnitude of resurgence relative to a condition in which FCT was implemented in a traditional manner. Results suggested that the combination of these three refinements to FCT was successful in decreasing the resurgence of destructive behavior during an extinction challenge. We discuss the implications of these findings, as well as areas for future research.

Recent research findings (DeRosa, Fisher, & Steege, [DeRosa, N. M., 2015]) suggest that minimizing exposure to the establishing operation (EO) for destructive behavior when differential reinforcement interventions like functional communication training (FCT) are introduced may produce more immediate reductions in destructive behavior and prevent or mitigate extinction bursts. We directly tested this hypothesis by introducing FCT with extinction in two conditions, one with limited exposure to the EO (limited EO) and one with more extended exposure to the EO (extended EO) using a combined reversal and multielement design. Results showed that the limited‐EO condition rapidly reduced destructive behavior to low levels during every application, whereas the extended‐EO condition produced an extinction burst in five of six applications. We discuss these findings in relation to the effects of EO exposure on the beneficial and untoward effects of differential reinforcement interventions.

We summarize the results of four recent translational studies from our lab that used the predictions of behavioral momentum theory to inform the development of more durable treatments for destructive behavior. Treatments informed by behavioral momentum theory generally showed better suppression of target responding during an extinction challenge than did a comparison treatment. We reanalyze data from each of the four studies to show that this general finding is apparent both at the aggregate (i.e., proportion of baseline response rates averaged across participants) and within participant (i.e., percentage reduction in proportion of baseline response rates, difference in raw response rates during the extinction challenge). Interestingly, participants who experienced multiple cycles of the extinction challenge generally showed less differentiation in target responding between the treatment informed by behavioral momentum theory and the comparison treatment. Overall results suggest that applications of behavioral momentum theory can substantially improve the durability of common treatments for destructive behavior.