Competition and preference in the treatment of automatically reinforced challenging behavior

The experimenters compared the relative utility of two types of pretreatment assessments, the competing-stimulus assessment (CSA) and the paired-stimulus preference assessment (PSPA), for identifying items to treat automatically reinforced challenging behavior. Five individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder who exhibited automatically reinforced challenging behavior participated. The relative efficacy of the CSA item and the PSPA item were compared during two treatment evaluations: noncontingent reinforcement (NCR) and differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO). NCR reduced challenging behavior for four of the five participants. For three of these participants, the CSA item was more efficacious than the PSPA item; CSA and PSPA items were equally efficacious for the remaining participants. For two participants, DRO decreased challenging behavior and there were minimal differences in treatment efficacy across CSA and PSPA items. Implications for the utility of the CSA and the PSPA as pretreatment assessments in treatment development are discussed.