Case Study: Using a Contingency-Based Delay Procedure to Decrease Tantrums During Periods of Delayed Reinforcement

Functional Communication Training (FCT) involves reinforcing a functional communicative response (FCR) while placing problem behaviors on extinction (Carr & Durrand, 1985). When reinforcement for the FCR is delayed or unavailable, the individual’s problem behavior may return to previous levels (i.e., resurgence of previously reinforced problem behavior; Briggs et al., 2018) or the participant may exhibit emotional responding consistent with an extinction burst (Lerman & Iwata, 1996). A contingency-based delay procedure was introduced which increased the participant’s percentage of trials without tantrums and decreased the overall duration of tantrums