Integrating Client and Implementer Preferences During Functional Communication Training with Discriminative Stimuli

Behavior analysts often implement functional communication training (FCT) to treat socially reinforced challenging behavior, which involves teaching clients an appropriate communication response to access the reinforcer maintaining challenging behavior. One option for making FCT more practical is to introduce treatment signals that teach the client the discrimination of when requests will be honored while increasing periods of unavailability. This is known as FCT with discriminative stimuli. These signaled periods that end following the passage of time or a client responding (e.g., cooperation with tasks) use multiple and chained schedules, respectively. Although these treatments effectively reduce reinforcement while maintaining ideal levels of adaptive and challenging behavior, practitioners may be unfamiliar with how to solicit input from clients, caregivers, and other stakeholders when designing such interventions. This paper serves as a tutorial on how to collaborate with consumers when using FCT with discriminative stimuli and highlights key areas for client and caregiver input.