The Historical Context of Noncontingent Reinforcement as a Behavioral Treatment

The aim of this paper is to trace the devel-opment of the behavioral treatment known as noncontingent reinforcement (NCR). The focus will be on the emergence of NCR based on a functional analysis. We do not intend to provide an exhaustive review of the NCR literature, as that is available elsewhere (e.g., Carr, Coriaty, Wilder, Gaunt, Dozier, Britton, et al., 2000). Rather, our purpose is to describe the context of research at the time NCR as treatment first emerged. Begin-ning in the early 1990s, the first studies on NCR as treatment appeared in the literature (e.g., Mace & Lalli, 1991; Vollmer, Iwata, Zarcone, Smith, & Mazaleski, 1993). Within a short period of time, dozens of additional studies appeared. Figure 1 below shows the rapid emergence of NCR as treatment. Publications on NCR are plotted cumulatively year by year (including only studies on treatment, analogs to treatment, and reviews or discussion papers about NCR as treatment). Why did the research on NCR as treatment begin when it did? Why did NCR become a relatively popu-lar form of intervention in the applied behavior analysis literature? First, and primarily, NCR as treatment emerged because of the (then) relatively recent development of functional analysis pro-cedures. Second, the potential for negative side effects of other procedures such as extinction and DRO led to a search for alternative procedures. Third, an empirical groundwork was provided by basic research on time-based schedules and by the applied research on NCR as a control procedure for reinforcement tests. Finally, NCR research persisted over time most likely because the prepa-ration naturally sets up a host of component and parametric analyses