Targeting Communication Adaptability During Functional Communication Training With Lag Schedules of Reinforcement to Increase Variable Manding

Abstract

We replicated and extended previous findings on utilizing lag schedules of reinforcement to increase manding and decrease challenging behavior. We used FCT with a lag schedule to teach the participant to request his toys with the mand "toys please" or "break please". We did this using four modalities, including vocal, sign, picture, and button. Results suggest a functional relation between the participant's frequency and variability of mands and the FCTlLag intervention. There was also a functional relation determined between the FCT/Lap intervention and the participant's CB. CB remained low and stable and eventually remaine d atzero. Our study is a direct.replication of Willard and colleagues (under review) and shows similar evidence in stable and high variable mands and low CB. However, Willard's participant had a different diagnosis as the current study's participant and showed different challenging behaviors. Similarly to Willard's, the current participant met the minimum response requirement to access reinforcement without ever emitting unnecessary mands, which is also different from Pokorski and colleagues (2020). The current participant would utilize a mand, almost always button first, then wait to see if he received reinforcement. If not, he would move onto a different mand. He never performed mands at the same time