University of Nebraska Medical Center
Project Title: A Parametric Evaluation of Treatment Integrity Level and Error Type During DRO
Differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) is a reinforcement schedule wherein a learner receives a reinforcer contingent on the absence of a target response, resulting in the reduction of the response (Reynolds, 1961). DRO is commonly used to treat challenging behavior in clinical settings (Matson et al., 2011) but can be difficult to implement with high treatment integrity. Further, many different types of procedural integrity errors can be introduced during DRO (e.g., commission, omission, and combined errors). When errors are made in behavior analytic interventions, treatment effects can be degraded (e.g., St. Peter Pipkin et al., 2010). The degree to which treatment efficacy is impacted by integrity level can vary across treatments (Brand et al., 2019) and error types (e.g., St. Peter et al., 2016), and it is important to understand the bounds of effective treatments to provide the best services possible. To date, it is unclear what level of treatment integrity is necessary for DRO to be efficacious and what error type is most detrimental. Foreman et al. (2023) evaluated the effect of different treatment integrity levels (i.e., 80%, 60%, 40%, 20%) during DRO with commission errors alone and found that errors had no effect for half of participants (even at 20% integrity) and had a deleterious effect for the other half of participants at or below 60% integrity. However, further evaluations of DRO implemented with reduced integrity across various error types are warranted.
The 2024 Innovative Student Research Grant will support a pair of experiments evaluating treatment integrity level and error type during DRO. Paige O’Neill is a doctoral candidate at the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Munroe-Meyer Institute in Omaha, Nebraska under the advisement of Dr. Catalina Rey. Paige developed two parametric evaluations to better understand the impact of treatment integrity errors on the efficacy of DRO in a human operant arrangement. In Experiment 1, Paige will evaluate several different treatment integrity levels during DRO implemented with combined errors. In Experiment 2, Paige will compare different types of treatment integrity errors (i.e., commission errors, omission errors, and combined errors) on the efficacy of DRO when treatment integrity level is held constant. These experiments aim to further inform behavior analysts about the minimum requirements for efficacious DRO, allowing clinicians to better tailor training for implementers of DRO interventions in applied contexts.
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