Reinforcing a Tantrum with a break?

[Guest guest]

Hi Ben,

I read the post below that you wrote to Sharon. It sounds like you are

recommending against traditional ABA approaches with your recommendation about

reinforcing a tantrum with a " break " but I am not so sure you are going about it

the best possible way.

I would be interested in discussing this with you (and for Sharon's sake)

because although you are showing a more child friendly approach to ABA with your

recommendation, I think you can use the recommendations of the VB approach to

ABA with similar but even better results. Let me try to explain.

It is basic behaviorism to understand that any behavior that meets with

reinforcement will increase and if you are reinforcing tantrums with breaks

chances are very good that the tantrums will come quicker and more often if they

are consistently leading to escape from work.

I am confident that in practice you are not letting this occur but someone

reading your advice might not know how to walk this fine line (nor did you give

recommendations about how to avoid this).

One of the arguments you gave was about giving the break being a better choice

than escape extinction. I agree that it is. But, here is how the

recommendations of my book (and I would think a good percentage of VB people

might suggest this situation be addressed).

Instead of reinforcing the tantrum with a break, you want to be good at knowing

your child's frustration levels and what you might be doing to push him past

those frustration levels. Over time you want to offer your teaching in a way

that is more reinforcing than being away from teaching would be. You want to be

good about pushing the child to higher levels of participation and longer

working periods but you want to do so by reinforcing just before the child is

likely to begin to tantrum. When you do this, you are actually reinforcing the

longer appropriate work period. Additionally, instead of reinforcing with a

break (negative reinforcement) we would recommend that you reinforce with

pairing activities that keep the child motivated to continue interaction with

you (positive reinforcement). If you are good at pairing and outside

rienforcement is appropriately restricted, the child will welcome this paired

play time as a break from work and will want to continue

following your directions as long as possible in order to have this paired

reinforcment time again.

Conversely, if you make a teaching mistake and push the child too far to the

point of a refusal or tantrum, I would suggest that offering a break at this

time is counterproductive in any approach of ABA. I would try to get the child

to participate in a few more responses and then reinforce the fact that the

child participated at a difficult time rather than continued tantrumming.

Now here is where it gets a little tricky as to what someone might recommend.

Some ABA and VB consultants would recommend using escape extinction during the

refusal to get the compliance. (this is likely the cause of the tantrum) Like

you, I would also avoid this. But I would do so with basic extinction. Meaning

that if the child refused to follow an instruction, instead of holding him there

and having him tantrum, I would turn the tables on him and send him away from

the teaching setting. However, I would be sure that I had full access to all the

fun activities in the environment and that he did not. This way, although, like

you said, he is getting his " needed " break, it came at my control (not his) and

the value of that break is not nearly the same as working with me until the next

pairing activity would have been. (basically it becomes like a time-out

procedure). The longer the child is on his self-imposed break (or better yet a

break that I imposed as a

consequence to lower than acceptable participation) the longer he goes without

access to reinforcement, without access to my attention and pairing fun.

Assuming that my reinforcement value is high and my pairing is truly

reinforcing, the child will very quickly try to re-engage me in these fun

activities. When he does, I say sure but we have to finish this first and

repeat the instruction that he walked away from or (I sent him away from). Once

the child has shown me he is willing to participate, I will let him re-engage in

my teaching, I will then reinforce this choice by resuming my current

teaching-Reiforcement(pairing) ratio.

After the session or during my next free moment, I will then try to identify

what happened that caused him to walk away from my teaching or refuse to

participate at an appropriate level. Was I too repetitive, too slow with my

SD's, not prompting as much as needed, going longer than the expected Variable

ratio I have been working with, etc.?

What this will do is not reinforce the tantrum or refusal (although the child

technically does take a break) It will motivate the child to want to stay

engaged with me longer, and it will allow me not to need escape extinction which

unfortunately causes the child to see my teaching setting as a forced

interaction and not an interaction that he is choosing to be a part of. What we

have found in our institute for 3+ years now is that in almost every case the

self-imposed or teacher-imposed extinction breaks dramatically reduce in

frequency and length (in some cases completely disappear) as the child deems the

learning setting more rewarding than the escape setting and begins using better

compliance behaviors to be able to maintain the teaching setting.

To me, this extended VB approach is the best of all worlds and what my book

" ETR " professes. Conceptually, What are your thoughts?

________________________

Schramm, MA, BCBA

www.lulu.com/knospe-aba

www.knospe-aba.com

________________________

Re: [VerbalBehavior] Teaching fluency? or prompt dependency?

Hi Sharon,

I've been hearing that for years: if the kid isn't

responding or tantruming, don't let him go because

you're reinforcing escape behavior. Not true at all.

Think about it: the kid is not responding, he's

tantruming, why? Because whatever the therapist is

doing is a)too difficult, b)too boring c)reinforcer

burnout, d) someone told him Barney died. A lot of

reasons. When I'm burnt doing paperwork, I take a

break. I come back refreshed and ready to roll. Why

would it be any different w/kids? And when they come

back, do exactly as you suggest: easy trials of

previously mastered stuff, sneak in the hard one, back

to easy, two hard ones, etc. Try it, you'll find that

kids that can't communicate sometimes just need that

break. ben

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