Clarifying Functional Analysis Outcomes for Disruptive Behaviors by Controlling Consequence Delivery for Stereotypy.

Abstract. Although individuals may engage in several topographies of aberrant behavior, each with different functions, it is not uncommon for researchers to conduct one functional analysis. We conducted two functional analyses for a child with autism, one with and one without consequences for stereotypic vocalizations. Only the analysis without consequences for stereotypic vocalizations differentiated the function of the primary target behavior, disruption. The data suggest that in some cases high-rate behaviors may serve as establishing operations that mask the function of lower rate behaviors and warrant separate functional analyses. ********** The development of effective behavioral interventions for persons with severe behavior problems has been enhanced through functional assessment procedures (Asmus, Vollmer, & Borrero, 2002). Functional assessment encompasses a variety of procedures that are both descriptive and experimental in nature (Ervin et al., 2001). Ervin et al. recently identified 100 published articles on the use of functional assessment in the school setting. School psychologists can assist or lead efforts to integrate functional assessments of problem behaviors into the delivery of behaviorally based services to students with behavior disorders. A functional analysis of behavior involves the experimental manipulation of consequence events to identify factors consequent to target behavior that reinforce its occurrence (e.g., escape from demands maintains self-injury). The use of a functional analysis can lead to the identification of causal relationships that exist between these environmental events and target behaviors (Asmus et al., 2002). The identification of causal relationships is what distinguishes these analyses from other forms of functional assessment procedures such as descriptive assessments (Mace & Lalli, 1991). Descriptive assessments simply show the correlation between environmental events and behavior, but do not establish a causal relationship between either antecedents or consequences and target behavior (Lennox & Miltenberger, 1989). The goal of functional analysis is to enhance treatment development by identifying consequences that maintain aberrant behavior in order to match appropriate replacement responses to the function of aberrant behavior (Lennox & Miltenberger, 1989). The resulting outcomes of these studies have supported the validity of functional analysis procedures both for assessing aberrant behavior and for developing effective treatments (Iwata, 1994). Various topographies of aberrant behavior (i.e., what the behavior "looks like") exhibited by the same individual may have different functions and, thus, may warrant separate analysis (Mace, Page, Ivancic, & O'Brien, 1986). Mace et al. (1986) demonstrated that graphing topographies separately, rather than as an aggregate, is one way in which distinct functions can be determined while conducting a single functional analysis. Derby et al. (1994, 2000) evaluated this technique with a total of 52 participants and found that graphing topographies separately led to more differentiated results than analyzing behaviors as an aggregate. These authors noted, however, that for 3 participants in that study, providing consequences for high rates of stereotypy during the functional analysis might have reduced the occurrence of the other aberrant behaviors and therefore the ability to determine their function. Thus, when conducting one functional analysis for several behaviors, the potential exists for one high rate behavior (e.g., stereotypy) to contact contingencies more often, which may end up reducing the rate of other aberrant behaviors. When one topography of behavior occurs at a rate too low to identify the function of that behavior, it precludes the development of treatments that will be effective in reducing or eliminating that behavior for a particular individual. In addition to the research literature on multiple topographies, recent literature on the presence versus absence of protective equipment (e. …