1. Given the following scenario, please explain why you would want to use differential reinforcement and behavioral momentum in this specific case.

Scenario:

Olivia is a 10-year-old female diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. She communicates through vocal-verbal language in 2-3-word utterances and can request for a large variety of items. She currently attends a private day school specializing in Applied Behavior Analysis, where she is assigned a 1:1 ABA trained staff. Most of her programming is completed utilizing discrete trial instruction, where she earns tokens for accurate responding (regardless of interfering behaviors) and trades in for walks in the hallway. Her BCBA has noticed that her progress across programming has stalled lately. She sets up time to observe a variety of programs across multiple staff. During her observations, she notes that Olivia spends a lot of time during the intertrial interval engaging in both non-contextual vocalizations (i.e., humming, nonsense sounds) and hand flapping. This leads to the staff attempting to gain her attention prior to the next trial, which is unsuccessful at times, leading to incorrect responding. The BCBA completes an FA which indicates that the vocalizations and hand flapping are maintained by automatic reinforcement.