Which type of behavior intervention involves withholding reinforcement?

Withholding reinforcement is the fundamental principle behind attention extinction, making it the correct choice. In this type of intervention, a behavior that is maintained by reinforcement—typically attention—is no longer reinforced. For example, if a child engages in a disruptive behavior to gain attention from a caregiver, consistently ignoring that behavior would be an application of attention extinction.

This intervention aims to reduce the occurrence of the targeted behavior by removing the reinforcement that previously maintained it. Once the individual realizes that their maladaptive behavior does not yield the desired attention, they are likely to decrease or eliminate the unwanted behavior over time.

The other types of interventions mentioned do not primarily focus on the withholding of reinforcement as their core strategy. Functional communication training involves teaching a more appropriate way to communicate needs, while a token economy is a system where desired behaviors are reinforced with tokens that can be exchanged for rewards. Replacement behavior strategies focus on encouraging new, positive behaviors instead of the targeted behaviors without necessarily withholding reinforcement from the undesired behavior.