The Use of Contingency-Based Procedures to Promote Tolerance of Schedule Thinning for Hypothesized Multiply Maintained Problem Behavior

Contingency-based procedures have been found to be effective in facilitating delays to reinforcement for escape-maintained behavior within research and clinical contexts. Few studies have evaluated the use of these procedures for multiply maintained problem behavior. A contingency-based procedure was conducted with two participants to evaluate the effectiveness this procedure had on increasing tolerance to schedule thinning for problem behavior that was hypothesized to be multiply controlled. Results suggested that the procedure was effective at facilitating tolerance for a delay for both participants after switching to a lower effort task.