BA440 Unit 4 Extinction Paper Example

Day Three Was the Worst Day: A BA440 Unit 4 Extinction Paper

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

BA440: Behavior Intervention

Unit 4 Extinction Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The writer, the agency, the family and every figure are composite and illustrative; the articles cited are real.

Extinction Is Not Ignoring

Extinction means that a behavior which was previously reinforced no longer produces its reinforcer, and as a result it decreases over time. Families often hear the word as "ignore it," but that is only one form. Iwata et al. (1994) showed that extinction procedures must match the function of the behavior. In their study, procedures that withheld attention reduced attention-maintained behavior, procedures that prevented escape reduced escape-maintained behavior, and procedures that blocked sensory consequences reduced automatically maintained behavior. A procedure that did not match the function had little effect. Ignoring a child who screams to escape homework, for example, simply allows the escape.

Mateo's tantrums while his mother cooks are maintained by her attention, so extinction for him does mean withholding attention during tantrums. For Jonah, whose homework refusal is maintained by escape, extinction means that refusal no longer ends homework, which looks very different.

Why Extinction Was Added

Mateo's plan started with noncontingent attention every three minutes, which reduced tantrums sharply. When we began thinning the schedule to five minutes, tantrums returned on some evenings, and his mother still went to him when they did. My supervising behavior analyst recommended adding extinction for tantrums, together with teaching Mateo to ask for attention with "Mama, play" or a picture card, which his mother would honor right away.

Preparing the Family for a Burst

Lerman and Iwata (1995) examined published data sets to estimate how often extinction bursts occur, a temporary increase in the frequency, duration or intensity of behavior when reinforcement is first withheld. Bursts appeared in a sizable minority of the data sets, and far less often when extinction came packaged with reinforcement for another behavior or with noncontingent reinforcement than when it stood alone. Lerman et al. (1999) later found that extinction of self-injury was also sometimes accompanied by aggression, again less often when other procedures were in place.

Before starting, my supervisor and I met with Mateo's mother and father. We told them that tantrums might get worse before they got better, that a burst would mean the plan was working rather than failing, and that the worst response would be to give attention after a long tantrum, which would teach Mateo that longer tantrums work. We agreed on what she would do: keep cooking, keep him safe, say nothing about the tantrum, and turn to him warmly the moment he asked or the tantrum stopped for ten seconds.

Giving in on the worst night would have taught Mateo that the worst tantrum is the one that works.

Safety Planning

Withholding attention cannot mean withholding supervision. Mateo kicks cabinets during tantrums, so his parents moved a small rug in front of them and removed breakable items from his reach. If he hit his head or moved toward the stove, his mother would block calmly and move him without talking about the tantrum. Our supervisor set a rule: if any tantrum exceeded thirty minutes or involved injury, the family would call her, and the plan would be reviewed before the next evening.

The Evenings

In the first two evenings, tantrums were similar to baseline. On the third evening, Mateo had a twenty-six-minute tantrum, the longest of the year, kicking the rug and crying for his mother. She told me later that she nearly went to him twice. She did not, and when he stopped and said "Mama," she knelt and played with him for several minutes. On the fourth evening, the tantrum lasted nine minutes. By the second week, tantrums occurred on two of seven evenings and averaged under four minutes, and Mateo was asking for her about six times per cooking hour.

Why Reinforcement Mattered

The asking response made extinction tolerable for Mateo and his family. Without it, the plan would have taken away his only way to reach his mother. With it, he had a better way, and his mother had something to do besides wait out the tantrum. This combination reflects the research: Lerman and colleagues found fewer bursts and less aggression when extinction was combined with reinforcement.

Spontaneous Recovery and Other Adults

Two later events tested the plan. In the fifth week, after several calm evenings, Mateo had a fifteen-minute tantrum on a Sunday, a return of the behavior that behavior analysts call spontaneous recovery. Because his parents knew it might happen, they responded exactly as before, and the next tantrum was short. The second test came when his grandmother cooked for the family during a weekend visit. She had not been part of our meetings, and she picked Mateo up during his first tantrum, which was followed by three long tantrums that weekend. We met with her the next week, with his mother translating some of the plan into Spanish, and she agreed to follow it. Extinction works only if every adult who controls the reinforcer withholds it, and in a large family that means planning for more people than the parents.

Ethics and Acceptability

Extinction can be distressing for families and children, and its use requires informed consent and a clear rationale. We explained the procedure, the risks and the alternatives, and his parents chose to proceed. His father, who works nights, said he had expected the hardest part to be Mateo's crying, but it was actually watching his wife keep cooking. Acceptability is not just whether a procedure works but whether a family can live with it, and we checked with them weekly, asking each parent separately how the evenings felt.

Extinction for Escape: A Contrast

For Jonah, extinction looks like his mother calmly pointing to the next problem after refusal, or bringing the worksheet to the couch, so that refusal never ends homework. It is paired with two-minute breaks earned for completed problems. Ignoring Jonah would have been the wrong extinction procedure, as Iwata and colleagues' analysis predicts, because it would have allowed escape.

Conclusion

Extinction for Mateo's tantrums meant withholding attention, the reinforcer his assessment identified, as Iwata and colleagues' work requires. Lerman and Iwata's findings prepared his family for a burst, which came on the third evening and passed. Pairing extinction with reinforcement for asking, consistent with the research on fewer side effects, gave Mateo a better way to reach his mother.

References

Iwata, B. A., Pace, G. M., Cowdery, G. E., & Miltenberger, R. G. (1994). What makes extinction work: An analysis of procedural form and function. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 27(1), 131-144. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1994.27-131

Lerman, D. C., & Iwata, B. A. (1995). Prevalence of the extinction burst and its attenuation during treatment. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 28(1), 93-94. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1995.28-93

Lerman, D. C., Iwata, B. A., & Wallace, M. D. (1999). Side effects of extinction: Prevalence of bursting and aggression during the treatment of self-injurious behavior. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 32(1), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1999.32-1