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THE EFFECTS OF PRESESSION ATTENTION ON SUBSEQUENT ATTENTION‐EXTINCTION AND ALONE CONDITIONS
Author(s) -
O'Reilly Mark,
Edrisinha Chaturi,
Sigafoos Jeff,
Lancioni Giulio,
Machalicek Wendy,
Antonucci Massimo
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
journal of applied behavior analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.1
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1938-3703
pISSN - 0021-8855
DOI - 10.1901/jaba.2007.731-735
Subject(s) - psychology , extinction (optical mineralogy) , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , chemistry , mineralogy
We examined the effects of presession levels of attention (no attention vs. continuous attention) during subsequent alone and attention‐extinction conditions for an individual with severe disabilities and problem behavior. A prior functional analysis indicated that attention was a primary maintaining variable for problem behavior. Experimental control was demonstrated using a within‐subject multielement design. Results indicated that presession conditions influenced responding, with higher levels of problem behavior occurring during alone and attention‐extinction conditions when preceded by the no‐attention presession condition. Overall, these results seem to support descriptions of the behavior‐altering effects of the motivating operation (MO). Specifically, presession access seemed to influence behavior during the alone condition in which both discriminative and reinforcing stimuli were absent, suggesting a direct effect of the MO on the behavior.