Our professional literature has emphasized the importance of focusing on natural contingencies for over 50 years. A natural contingency occurs spontaneously without modifying the environment, and serves to maintain the target behavior after the program is over. If we don’t focus on establishing natural contingencies as our end goal, we should expect that eventually the program will not last in the long run. Although I don’t have data, it seems very clear that many applied behavior analysts develop programs that do not focus on establishing natural contingencies. Why? I believe it is a behavior trap.
A behavior trap is a situation where it is relatively easy to engage in the entry behavior, but once you begin, you enter the trap, which changes many behaviors and is very hard to escape. These “traps” can cause both beneficial and harmful behavior changes.
For example, going to college is a common behavior trap. It is relatively easy to apply to college. But once you start, it will produce numerous behavior changes. It often leads to many beneficial behavior changes like developing career skills, making life-long friends, and learning to be independent. It often can yield harmful changes too, like binge drinking and taking on too much debt.
Life is filled with behavior traps. Some examples include getting a job, joining a church, or even buying a Netflix subscription.
I believe BCBAs are frequently in a behavior trap that prevents many of us from focusing on natural contingencies. First, we get a referral problem – say severe problem behavior, academic difficulties, toileting, or feeding. It is often possible for us to produce huge benefits to the client in a fairly short period of time. That’s a relatively easy entrance response. But the short-term successes trap us into not focusing on the long-term goal of maintaining behavior through natural contingencies.
For example, let’s say a child is referred for self-injurious behavior so dangerous that the child is causing tissue damage to his head. After a few months, self-injurious behavior has been reduced to zero levels. The data on the referral problem look great! The parents are happy! The teachers are thrilled! The funding source is very satisfied! Even the advocates and lawyers are truly appreciative. Everyone is looking at what’s next. He needs to spend more time interacting with peers. We need to get him caught up in academics. He makes loud noises when walking in the hallway, etc. etc.
What usually happens? We make enormous gains in the new referral problems, too. This is highly reinforcing to us (the BCBAs). We are getting huge amounts of positive reinforcement from parents, staff, teachers, and others. We love this job! That’s the behavior trap. Those results all seem positive and everyone is happy, so what’s the problem? Sometimes nothing, the child moves on to make friends independently and go to school without assistance.
In many cases though, there is a big problem. These behavior changes are usually not meeting a natural contingency despite the fact things might look great for a very long time, sometimes even years. But these changes require us to maintain them. This leads to all sorts of negative effects:
- Sometimes any new person who works with the child needs a lot of training on his or her individual plans before they can work with the child successfully.
- Sometimes it is very hard to handle situations when a staff person is out sick.
- Sometimes there is little generalization to the home setting.
- Sometimes, since there are so many things to maintain, small (and large) emergencies frequently pop up. The BCBA spends more and more time fire-fighting.
- Sometimes there is a never-ending list of new referral problems with the same child. The list just keeps growing.
- Sometimes it is impossible to change to a new BCBA (But you know him so well!)
- Often, during life transitions there are huge problems to solve (e.g., starting preschool, kindergarten, middle school, high school, camp, moving into a new house, new teacher, new medical procedures, or any of a thousand others).
- Often, it is easy for the BCBA to become overextended and start to burn out.
- Eventually, there is almost always a reduction in services as either the child has done so well, it is judged the child doesn’t need the intensive services, or the child no longer meets the eligibility for funding. At that point, the amount of regression can be shocking. Most of us expect it, but are still stunned by the extent of it. I’ve seen it numerous times.
Is there an easy solution? No, I don’t think so. The field would have solved this problem by now. But I do think it is helpful for us to be aware of the problem. As much as possible, remind yourself if you don’t have the time to do the work needed to obtain generalization and maintenance of the behavior changes, probably you would be better off not starting the behavior change program in the first place.