Analyzing Behavior: Part 1

Week 4: Functional Assessment

Functions of Behavior

• Positive Reinforcement– Social Positive Attention– Tangible Reinforcement– Automatic Positive Reinforcement

• Negative Reinforcement– Social Negative Reinforcement– Automatic Negative Reinforcement

Linking to Intervention

• Altering Antecedent Variables– Motivating Operation– Discriminative Stimuli

• Altering Consequence Variables– Extinction– Set up a negative reinforcement paradigm

• Teaching Alternative Behaviors– E.g. Functional Communication Training

Experimental Functional Analysis

• Purpose is to test each hypothesized function– Play Condition (Control)– Contingent Attention– Contingent Escape (Demand)– Alone (Automatic R+/-)

Limitations to EFA

• Increasing undesirable behavior• May lack face validity to lay person• May not be useful for all behaviors• Contrived not same as real environment• Requires professional expertise

Direct Descriptive Functional Analysis

• General Methods: A-B-C Logs, observations• Look for correlation of behavior and

hypothesized function in natural environment• Conditional Probabilities– Proportion of occurrences of target behavior that

were followed by specific hypothesized function.– Not strong agreement between C.P.’s and E.F.A

Indirect Descriptive Functional Assessment

• General Methods: Interviews & Rating Scales• Advantages: Convenient, initial Ho

development• Limitations: Not direct

A B C

• Let’s think about some of our own Behaviors• Let’s think about some behaviors of others– Consider the FBA flowchart on the “C”– We will discuss the “A” flowchart next week

FuBARS & FBA-Checklist

• Assesses the quality of assessments of interfering Behavior.

• Your Project will be graded using the FuBAR.– You will conduct a self-assessment• FuBARS & FBA-Checklist

– I will conduct an external assessment• FuBARS