The effects of presession attention on subsequent attention-extinction and alone conditions.

We examined the effects of presession levels of attention (no attention vs. continuous attention) during subsequent alone and attention-extinction conditions for an individual with severe disabilities and problem behavior. A prior functional analysis indicated that attention was a primary maintaining variable for problem behavior. Experimental control was demonstrated using a within-subject multielement design. Results indicated that presession conditions influenced responding, with higher levels of problem behavior occurring during alone and attention-extinction conditions when preceded by the no-attention presession condition. Overall, these results seem to support descriptions of the behavior-altering effects of the motivating operation (MO). Specifically, presession access seemed to influence behavior during the alone condition in which both discriminative and reinforcing stimuli were absent, suggesting a direct effect of the MO on the behavior.