Stimulus Avoidance Assessment: A Systematic Literature Review

Board certified behavior analysts are ethically required to first address destructive behavior using reinforcement-based and other less intrusive procedures before considering the use of restrictive or punishment-based procedures (ethics standard 2.15; Behavior Analyst Certification Board, 2020). However, the inclusion of punishment in reinforcement-based treatments may be warranted in some cases of severe forms of destructive behavior that poses risk of harm to the client or others. In these cases, behavior analysts are required to base the selection of treatment components on empirical assessment results (ethics standard 2.14; Behavior Analyst Certification Board, 2020). One such preintervention assessment is the stimulus avoidance assessment (SAA), which allows clinicians to identify a procedure that is likely to function as a punisher. Since the inception of this assessment approach, no studies have conducted a systematic literature review of published SAA cases. These data may be pertinent to examine the efficacy, generality, and best practices for the SAA. The current review sought to address this gap by synthesizing findings from peer-reviewed published literature including (1) the phenomenology and epidemiology of the population partaking in the SAA; (2) procedural variations of the SAA across studies (e.g., number of series, session length); (3) important quality indicators of the SAA (i.e., procedural integrity, social validity); and (4) how the SAA informed final treatment efficacy. We discuss findings in the context of the clinical use of the SAA and suggest several avenues for future research.