A comparison of procedures for unpairing conditioned reflexive establishing operations.

摘要

The purposes of the current investigation were to (a) pair a neutral stimulus with aversive demands to determine if the stimulus could be conditioned to evoke communication responses as a conditioned reflexive establishing operations (CEO-R) and (b) systematically determine the relative effects of two unpairing procedures on the communication evoked by the CEO. Task demands were shown to be establishing operations, evoking problem behavior to access escape, for 4 students with disabilities. Alternative communication responses were taught as an appropriate method to request escape. This treatment combined with extinction for problem behavior led to decreases in problem behavior for all students. A stimulus was then paired with the task demand during the motivating operations analysis to create a reflexive conditioned establishing operation (CEO-R) that evoked communication responses. Once data suggested that the stimulus was functioning as a CEO-R, two methods were evaluated to reduce the value of the stimulus. Results indicated that noncontingent reinforcement unpairing was an effective method to reduce the evocative effects of the stimulus. Extinction unpairing also decreased the value of the stimulus, but the evocative effects were never completely abolished. Results are discussed in terms of abolishing CEOs and the applied implications of CEOs.