Task Engagement and Escape Maintained Challenging Behavior: Differential Effects of General and Explicit Cues When Implementing a Signaled Delay in the Delivery of Reinforcement

This study was designed to evaluate the effects of explicit and general delay cues when implementing a tolerance for a delay in the delivery of a reinforcement procedure to increase task engagement and decrease escape maintained challenging behavior. Two preschool children with autism participated in an alternating treatments design with changing criterions for task engagement. For both children, descriptive and experimental analyses verified that the challenging behavior functioned to escape instructional task demands. Subsequently, two types of tasks were identified for each participant with assignment to either the explicit or general cue procedures. Both participants demonstrated increased task engagement with concurrent decreases in challenging behavior with both types of delay cues, though rate of successful work unit completion advanced more quickly with explicit delay cues.