Smith, R. G., Russo, L., & Le, D. D. (1999).
Distinguishing between extinction and punishment effects of response blocking: A replication.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis,
32, 367-370.
Lerman and Iwata (1996) described a method for distinguishing
between sensory extinction and punishment effects of response
blocking on self-injurious behavior maintained independent of
social contingencies. Results of their study suggested that
blocking decreased the self-injurious hand mouthing of their
participant via punishment. The current replication of these
procedures with the self-injurious eye poking of a woman with
developmental disabilities produced patterns of responding
indicating that, for this participant, blocking functioned as an
extinction procedure.
DESCRIPTORS: _response blocking, sensory extinction, punishment