Empirically Deriving Omission and Commission Errors for Relapse Tests: A Demonstration of Reverse Translation

Area of Science:

• Behavioral Psychology
• Autism Spectrum Disorder Research
• Applied Behavior Analysis

Background:

• Treatment relapse is often studied with perfect treatment integrity or omission errors.
• Caregiver errors in response to destructive behavior offer insights for relapse research.
• Previous work by Mitteer et al. (2018) highlighted caregiver error patterns.

Purpose of the Study:

• To pilot methods for reverse-translating caregiver error findings into relapse preparations with children.
• To investigate the impact of programmed caregiver-like errors on treatment relapse in children with ASD.
• To establish a human-operant arrangement for studying relapse in a controlled setting.

Main Methods:

• A human-operant arrangement was used with three children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
• Participants emitted target responses for items in a home-like context and alternative responses in a clinic context (target response extinguished).
• A relapse test programmed low-rate omission and commission errors mirroring caregiver errors from a previous study.

Main Results:

• Target responding approximated or exceeded baseline levels for all participants during the relapse test.
• Alternative behavior extinguished in two out of the three cases.
• The study demonstrated the feasibility of reverse-translating caregiver error patterns.

Conclusions:

• Programmed errors, similar to those made by caregivers, can re-establish target responding in children with ASD.
• This methodology provides a framework for future relapse research by incorporating realistic error patterns.
• Further research can refine these translation processes for more effective relapse prevention and intervention strategies.