Assessment and Functional Behavior Analysis
Assessment and Functional Behavior Analysis tests your ability to identify why behavior occurs and to select methods that support a function-based plan. It covers indirect methods, descriptive methods, and experimental functional analysis.
Core rules
- Functional behavior assessment is a process, not a single tool: indirect methods (interviews, rating scales), descriptive methods (ABC recording, scatterplots), and experimental methods answer different questions.
- Functional analysis tests hypotheses by manipulating antecedents and consequences; common conditions are play/control, attention, demand/escape, alone (automatic), and tangible.
- Descriptive data can show correlations and conditional probabilities but cannot demonstrate causation.
- Operationally define the target behavior and the replacement behavior before collecting data.
- Assess setting events and establishing operations such as sleep, illness, hunger, and task difficulty that alter the value of consequences.
Worked example
Aggression occurs during math. ABC data show most episodes follow difficult problems and are followed by removal from math. A brief functional analysis alternates demand and play conditions; aggression is high only in demand. Hypothesis: escape from task demands. A plan would modify task difficulty, teach a break request, and reinforce break requests while problem behavior no longer produces escape.
Traps
Equating topography with function; relying on interviews alone; calling descriptive data a functional analysis; ignoring automatic reinforcement; and failing to assess whether the replacement behavior is efficient.