Comparison of Parameter Hierarchy Assessments with Arbitrary and Clinically Relevant Behavior

Although extinction is a common and effective treatment component included in behavior reduction procedures, adverse side effects may make its inclusion impractical to implement. Treatments that include concurrent reinforcement schedule arrangements may provide an alternative to the inclusion of extinction. A recent review by Trump et al. (2020) found that concurrent schedules without extinction interventions were successful in reducing challenging behavior, but the results of the interventions were idiosyncratic. Kunnavatana et al. (2018) assessed individual and relative sensitivity to the parameters of reinforcement used in concurrent schedule-based interventions to determine a parameter hierarchy prior to developing an intervention for challenging behavior. However, they used arbitrary behaviors during the assessment. Thus, the current study compared the results of a parameter hierarchy assessment with arbitrary behaviors to a parameter hierarchy assessment with clinically relevant behaviors to determine if the results would align. Results show no alignment between the two assessments.