Contents
What Does Extinction Mean?
While withholding cocksure reinforcing stimulus by ignoring the behavior is an effective strategy, extinction may besides mean denying the customer access to specific items or activities ( for example, the client can not leave the classroom for lunch until he stands in agate line with his peers ) or removing the child from the environment. For exemplar, if a scholar with ASD continuously pinched her schoolmate during circle time, the ABA practitioner would remove the child from the environment each time this occurred to ensure the base hit of her classmates, but without saying anything to the child or identifying the problem behavior. however, each time the child sat beside her schoolmate without pinching, the teacher would provide her with praise or other positive strengthener, such as a nominal or dagger. It is important to not good reduce/eliminate an undesirable behavior but to besides encourage a substitute behavior. consequently, removing the child from the environment wouldn ’ metric ton be enough ; providing praise when the child sat with her hands in her lap and did not pinch her schoolmate is equally significant.
What Does Ignoring the Behavior Mean?
In general, during extinction, the undesirable demeanor is met with no eye contact, no forcible contact, and no verbal strengthener or reaction. Consider this : a child disrupts the class, and the class responds by laughing. The reply by the classify serves as a reward of the disruptive behavior and increases the likelihood that the child will disrupt the class again in the future. immediately, if the child disrupts the class, but the teacher and the other students choose to plainly ignore the behavior, the reinforcing stimulus of the behavior is eliminated. Without receiving any support of his demeanor, the child will be less probably to continue to disrupt the course in the future. While the undesirable behaviors in ABA are ignored, the convinced behaviors that take the identify of the negative behaviors are encouraged through cocksure support. Depending on the individual and the environment, the ABA practitioner may acknowledge the positive behavior by rewarding the child with activities, tokens, or praise.
When and How Should Extinction be Used?
extinction can be used for a number of behaviors, including :
- Sleeping/eating problems
- Dangerous/aggressive behaviors or those that can cause self-injury or injury to others
- Functional communication
- Inappropriate social behaviors
Applying extinction takes patience and consistency by the ABA practitioner because it ’ sulfur common for the undesirable demeanor to increase in frequency, duration, or intensity before fading aside. For model, the child who disrupts the class may become loud or more disruptive in an undertake to elicit a response when the classify ignores the demeanor. This exaggerated attempt at getting a reply is referred to as an extinction collapse. Before applying extinction, the ABA practitioner should :
- Identify the behavior and patterns related to it (frequency, duration, intensity, location, etc., including when it does and does not occur)
- Create an extinction plan and share it with all other practitioners working with the child to ensure consistency and support; in a classroom environment, this may include encouraging other students to ignore a specific behavior
- Create an extinction burst safety plan (should behavior get progressively worse before it gets better)