Psychology Commons^™

Evaluating And Mitigating The Relapse Of Undesirable Caregiver Behavior, Daniel R. Mitteer

Theses & Dissertations

The success of behavioral treatments like functional communication training depends on their continued implementation outside of the clinical context, where failures in caregiver treatment adherence can lead to the relapse of destructive behavior (St. Peter Pipkin, Vollmer, & Sloman, 2010). In Chapter 2, we developed a laboratory model for evaluating the relapse of undesirable caregiver behavior (e.g., delivering reinforcers following destructive behavior) in which we used an adult confederate who engaged in destructive behavior to simulate a treatment-adherence challenge. Undesirable caregiver behavior relapsed in three of four treatment-adherence challenges despite a behavior analyst using behavioral skills training (BST) to teach …