Functional Behavior Assessment Quiz

BST 1030: Week 3, Class 2

• Class date: Thursday, January 23rd, 2025
• Course code: BST 1030
• Instructor: Marina Jiujias

Agenda

• Introduction to Functional Behavior Assessment
• Review of operant learning and functions of behavior
• Basic components of a Functional Behavior Assessment
• Review of Reduction Assessment assignment

What We've Covered So Far

• Initial Information Gathering
  • What info do you need to know about the client?
  • Am I selecting socially significant behaviors for intervention?
• Selecting Target Behaviors
  • If reducing a behavior
    • What is the function of the behavior?
    • When, where, and how often does it occur?
    • What other relevant variables are there?
  • If teaching a behavior
    • What can the learner already do?
    • What pre-requisite skills do they have?
    • What other relevant variables are there?
• Directly Measuring Behavior
  • All target behaviors (reduction and acquisition targets) require direct measurement of the behavior prior to and during intervention, to measure any changes.

What are Behaviors to Reduce and Why is This Important?

• Some behaviors learned through environmental contingencies may be harmful to the individual or others. Such behaviors can present barriers to learning new skills, accessing various environments, and maximizing overall quality of life.

Treating Challenging Behavior: Brief History (Neef, 2001)

• Early ABA focused heavily on behavior modification.
• There was initial recognition that behaviors are learned through environmental contingencies, but little recognition of the function (reinforcement maintaining the behavior).
• The belief that immediate contingencies could override historical factors led to the frequent use of more intrusive procedures (e.g., punishment, heavily contrived reinforcers).
• Over time, aversive procedures were questioned, and research shifted towards a more positive approach.
• Behavioral assessment procedures focused on identifying the maintaining variables (function) of problem behaviors.
• Reinforcement increases all behavior (not just those considered appropriate). Behavior does not occur without reinforcement.
• ABA shifted from a modification model to an analysis model, focusing on patterns and relationships between behavior and environment. Analysis helps in matching treatments to the function to achieve desired results.

What is Functional Behavior Assessment?

• A client-driven process that often uses multiple methods.
• Aims to determine the environmental variables that maintain problem behaviors and the conditions under which they are likely to occur.
• This involves methods (Sigafoos et al., 2021).
• Effective procedures are essential to design function-based, effective interventions.

Goals of Functional Behavior Assessment

• Create a clear description of the interfering behavior (operational definition).
• Identify immediate antecedents that predict when the behavior likely will or will not occur.
• Identify setting events that predict when a behavior is more or less likely to occur.
• Identify consequences that maintain the interfering behavior.
• Establish a summary statement that describes the hypothesis of the function of the behavior based on the assessment results, and identifies a replacement behavior.
• Collect baseline data before starting any intervention.

Key Concepts in Functional Behavior Assessment

• Operant learning
• Functions of behavior

Operant Learning

• Operant behaviors occur within a 4-term contingency. This framework is used to examine the relationship between motivating operations, antecedents, the behavior, and consequences.
• Behaviors are learned through operant learning (all voluntary behaviors, regardless of whether we are working to increase or decrease them).
• To understand interfering behaviors and how to replace them with appropriate skills, it is necessary to gather information about these learning process components.

The 4-Term Contingency

• Includes motivating operations, antecedents, behaviors, and consequences.

What Does "Function of Behavior" Mean?

• Why is the behavior occurring?
• Why is this happening?
• What is the reason for this behavior now?
• What is the purpose of this behavior?
• What does the person get out of/ gain from this behavior?

Functions of Behavior Terminology: Socially Mediated vs. Automatic

• Socially Mediated: Someone else must be present to give a consequence for the behavior to contact reinforcement.
• Automatic: No one else needs to be present for the behavior to provide reinforcement; the behavior is self-reinforcing.

Please Note!

• In some readings (Cipani, 2018), "automatic" functions are referred to as "direct" sources of reinforcement. This means the same thing.

Functions of Behavior Terminology: Positive vs. Negative

• Positive Reinforcement: Something is added to the environment as a result of the behavior (consequence). The person receives something.
• Negative Reinforcement: Something is removed from the environment as a result of the behavior (consequence). The person avoids or escapes something.

Target Behavior

• Possible functions: automatic positive reinforcement (sensory), socially mediated positive reinforcement (attention), socially mediated positive reinforcement (access to tangibles), automatic negative reinforcement (sensory), socially mediated negative reinforcement (removal of attention, task, events, and/or objects).

Why Do We Need to Understand Function?

• Behavior topography (what it looks like) is not enough to understand the reasons behind a behavior to inform effective interventions.
• One person may run away when asked to perform a task because they have learned to avoid work through running away (negative reinforcement, escape), whereas someone else might run away to get attention (positive reinforcement, attention). This underlines the importance of recognizing that behaviors have underlying reasons linked with functions.

Same Topography, Different Function (Cipani, 2018)

• Demonstrates how the same behavior can be emitted in various contexts for different reasons.

It is Never Simple (Unfortunately)

• It's uncommon for a behavior to be maintained by only one function (multiple functions).
• Consider if a behavior is only an escape from activities or if other functions exist. Procedures to determine several factors impacting the behavior are important.

What is a Functional Behavior Assessment?

• The use of various assessment procedures to determine the environmental variables related to the target behavior for reduction or replacement.
• This information helps in determining the function of behavior to inform the implementation of function-based treatment.
• A functional behavior assessment is a process and not a single activity.

Processes Typically Used Within a Functional Behavior Assessment

• Descriptive assessment (observation/only procedures)
  • Indirect methods of assessment
  • Direct methods of assessment
• Functional analysis (environment is changed to test hypotheses related to behavior functions)

Indirect Assessment

• Purpose: gather information from relevant significant others in the client's life. - Gathering information related to the interfering behavior - Includes interviews, rating scales/checklists (helpful in generating hypotheses about the function)
• Benefits: easy-to-use, requires little training and time, helpful in engaging stakeholders, helpful to build intervention plans.
• Risks: information is anecdotal and subjective; poor reliability and validity if not used with other methods.

Direct Assessment

• Purpose: observe behavior in the natural environment to determine relationships between environmental events and behaviors.
• Includes ABC data (narrative and structured), scatterplot data.
• Benefits: more objective than indirect methods, conducted in naturalistic environments.
• Disadvantages: - Reinforcer may be strong enough to maintain the behavior regardless of the schedule; may not identify the correct maintaining variable. - Correlation does not mean causation. - Reactivity effects during observations can affect accuracy.

Functional Analysis

• Purpose: to experimentally change consequences and follow interfering behaviors. To demonstrate a functional relationship between behavior and related variables.
• Conditions where a behavior occurs most frequently provide the most empirical evidence of the behavior function(s).
• There are different methods of implementing a functional analysis.
• "Analysis" is defined as manipulating environmental variables to observe effects on behavior.
• Functional analysis helps in uncovering the functional relationship between environmental events and the target behavior.

Important Ethical Questions

• Why do functional analysis inherently mean we are evoking the problem behavior?
• What are the ethical considerations of functional analysis?

What You Should Know

• Differentiate between behavior modification and behavioral analysis
• Describe and identify examples of the four-term contingency
• List and describe the functions of behavior
• Identify possible functions given a description
• Explain the main components involved in a functional behavior assessment

For Next Class

• Submit in-class assignment
• Finish Journal Article Review assignment and submit by deadline
• Come to next class with a selected case study for a Reduction assignment

References (List of cited authors and work)