REDUCING ESCAPE BEHAVIOR AND INCREASING TASK COMPLETION WITH FUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION TRAINING, EXTINCTION AND RESPONSE CHAINING

The effects of functional communication training, extinction, and resp onse chaining on 3 subjects' escape-maintained aberrant behavior were evaluated using a multielement design. Functional communication traini ng consisted of reaching subjects a verbal response that was functiona lly equivalent to their aberrant behavior. Subjects initially were all owed to escape from a task contingent on the trained verbal response. In subsequent treatment phases, escape was contingent on the trained v erbal response plus the completion of the specified number of steps in the task (response chaining). The number of steps was increased until a subject completed the task to obtain a break. Results showed that t he treatment reduced rates of aberrant behavior and that the chaining procedure was effective in decreasing the availability of escape.