Functional analysis (psychology)

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Functional analysis in behavioral psychology is the application of the laws of operant and respondent conditioning to establish the relationships between stimuli and responses. To establish the function of operant behavior, one typically examines the "four-term contingency": first by identifying the motivating operations (EO or AO), then identifying the antecedent or trigger of the behavior, identifying the behavior itself as it has been operationalized, and identifying the consequence of the behavior which continues to maintain it.

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Functional assessment in behavior analysis employs principles derived from the natural science of behavior analysis to determine the "reason", purpose, or motivation for a behavior. The most robust form of functional assessment is functional analysis, which involves the direct manipulation, using some experimental design (e.g., a multielement design or a reversal design) of various antecedent and consequent events and measurement of their effects on the behavior of interest; [1] :93 this is the only method of functional assessment that allows for demonstration of clear cause of behavior. [ citation needed ]

Applications in clinical psychology

Functional analysis and consequence analysis are commonly used in certain types of psychotherapy to better understand, and in some cases change, behavior. It is particularly common in behavioral therapies such as behavioral activation, [2] although it is also part of Aaron Beck's cognitive therapy. In addition, functional analysis modified into a behavior chain analysis is often used in dialectical behavior therapy. [3]

There are several advantages to using functional analysis over traditional assessment methods. Firstly, behavioral observation is more reliable than traditional self-report methods. This is because observing the individual from an objective stand point in their regular environment allows the observer to observe both the antecedent and the consequence of the problem behavior. Secondly, functional analysis is advantageous as it allows for the development of behavioral interventions, either antecedent control or consequence control, specifically designed to reduce a problem behavior. Thirdly, functional analysis is advantageous for interventions for young children or developmentally delayed children with problem behaviors, who may not be able to answer self-report questions about the reasons for their actions.

Despite these benefits, functional analysis also has some disadvantages. The first that no standard methods for determining function have been determined [4] and meta-analysis shows that different methodologies appear to bias results toward particular functions as well as not effective in improving outcomes. [5] Second, Gresham and colleagues (2004) in a meta-analytic review of JABA articles found that functional assessment did not produce greater effect sizes compared to simple contingency management programs. [6] However, Gresham et al. combined the three types of functional assessment, of which descriptive assessment and indirect assessment have been reliably found to produce results with limited validity [7] [8] Third, although functional assessment has been conducted with a variety host of populations (i.e. [9] ) much of the current functional assessment research has been limited to children with developmental disabilities. [10]

Professional organizations

The Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) also has an interest group in behavior analysis, which focuses on the use of behavior analysis in the school setting including functional analysis.

Doctoral level behavior analysts who are psychologists belong to the American Psychological Association's division 25 – Behavior analysis. APA offers a diplomate in behavioral psychology and school psychology both of which focus on the use of functional analysis in the school setting.

The World Association for Behavior Analysis offers a certification for clinical behavior therapy and behavioral consultation, which covers functional analysis. [11]

The UK Society for Behaviour Analysis also provides a forum for behavior analysts for accreditation, professional development, continuing education and networking, and serves as an advocate body in public debate on issues relating to behavior analysis. The UK-SBA promotes the ethical and effective application of the principles of behavior and learning to a wide range of areas including education, rehabilitation and health care, business and the community and is committed to maintaining the availability of high-quality evidence-based professional behavior analysis practice in the UK. The society also promotes and supports the academic field of behavior analysis with in the UK both in terms of university-based training and research, and theoretical develop. [12]

See also

Related Research Articles

Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and other animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual's history, including especially reinforcement and punishment contingencies, together with the individual's current motivational state and controlling stimuli. Although behaviorists generally accept the important role of heredity in determining behavior, they focus primarily on environmental events.

<i>Verbal Behavior</i> Psychology book

Verbal Behavior is a 1957 book by psychologist B. F. Skinner, in which he describes what he calls verbal behavior, or what was traditionally called linguistics. Skinner's work describes the controlling elements of verbal behavior with terminology invented for the analysis - echoics, mands, tacts, autoclitics and others - as well as carefully defined uses of ordinary terms such as audience.

A behavior modification facility is a residential educational and treatment institution enrolling adolescents who are perceived as displaying antisocial behavior, in an attempt to alter their conduct. As of 2008 there were about 650 nongovernmental, residential programs in the United States offering treatment services for adolescents. Some similar institutions are operated as components of governmental education or correctional systems.

Applied behavior analysis (ABA), also called behavioral engineering, is a scientific technique concerned with applying empirical approaches based upon the principles of respondent and operant conditioning to change behavior of social significance. It is the applied form of behavior analysis; the other two forms are radical behaviorism and the experimental analysis of behavior.

Behaviour therapy or behavioural psychotherapy is a broad term referring to clinical psychotherapy that uses techniques derived from behaviourism and/or cognitive psychology. It looks at specific, learned behaviours and how the environment, or other people's mental states, influences those behaviours, and consists of techniques based on learning theory, such as respondent or operant conditioning. Behaviourists who practice these techniques are either behaviour analysts or cognitive-behavioural therapists. They tend to look for treatment outcomes that are objectively measurable. Behaviour therapy does not involve one specific method but it has a wide range of techniques that can be used to treat a person's psychological problems.

Behavior modification is a treatment approach that replaces undesirable behaviors with more desirable ones by using the principles of operant conditioning. Based on methodological behaviorism, overt behavior is modified with consequences, including positive and negative reinforcement contingencies to increase desirable behavior, or administering positive and negative punishment and/or extinction to reduce problematic behavior.

Behavioral engineering, also called applied behavior analysis, is intended to identify issues associated with the interface of technology and the human operators in a system and to generate recommended design practices that consider the strengths and limitations of the human operators.

"The behavior of the individual has been shaped according to revelations of 'good conduct' never as the result of experimental study."

A token economy is a system of contingency management based on the systematic reinforcement of target behavior. The reinforcers are symbols or tokens that can be exchanged for other reinforcers. A token economy is based on the principles of operant conditioning and behavioral economics and can be situated within applied behavior analysis. In applied settings token economies are used with children and adults; however, they have been successfully modeled with pigeons in lab settings.

Contingency management (CM) is the application of the three-term contingency, which uses stimulus control and consequences to change behavior. CM originally derived from the science of applied behavior analysis (ABA), but it is sometimes implemented from a cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) framework as well.

Challenging behaviour also known as behaviours which challenge, is defined as "culturally abnormal behaviour(s) of such intensity, frequency or duration that the physical safety of the person or others is placed in serious jeopardy, or behaviour which is likely to seriously limit or deny access to the use of ordinary community facilities". "Ordinarily we would expect the person to have shown the pattern of behaviour that presents such a challenge to services for a considerable period of time. Severely challenging behaviour is not a transient phenomenon."

Positive behavior support (PBS) is a form of applied behavior analysis that uses a behavior management system to understand what maintains an individual's challenging behavior and how to change it. People's inappropriate behaviors are difficult to change because they are functional; they serve a purpose for them. These behaviors are supported by reinforcement in the environment.

The professional practice of behavior analysis is one domain of behavior analysis: the others being radical behaviorism, experimental analysis of behavior and applied behavior analysis. The professional practice of behavior analysis is the delivery of interventions to consumers that are guided by the principles of radical behaviorism and the research of both the experimental analysis of behavior and applied behavior analysis. Professional practice seeks maximum precision to change behavior most effectively in specific instances. Behavior analysts are mental health professionals and, in some states, may hold a license, certificate or registration as a behavior analyst. In other states, there are no laws governing their practice and, as such, the practice may be prohibited as falling under the practice definition of other mental health professionals. This is rapidly changing as Behavior Analysts are becoming more and more common.

The behavioral analysis of child development originates from John B. Watson's behaviorism.

Tact is a term that B.F. Skinner used to describe a verbal operant which is controlled by a nonverbal stimulus and is maintained by nonspecific social reinforcement (praise).

Mand is a term that B.F. Skinner used to describe a verbal operant in which the response is reinforced by a characteristic consequence and is therefore under the functional control of relevant conditions of deprivation or aversive stimulation. One cannot determine, based on form alone, whether a response is a mand; it is necessary to know the kinds of variables controlling a response in order to identify a verbal operant. A mand is sometimes said to "specify its reinforcement" although this is not always the case. Skinner introduced the mand as one of six primary verbal operants in his 1957 work, Verbal Behavior.

A behavioral cusp is any behavior change that brings an organism's behavior into contact with new contingencies that have far-reaching consequences. A behavioral cusp is a special type of behavior change because it provides the learner with opportunities to access new reinforcers, new contingencies, new environments, new related behaviors (generativeness) and competition with archaic or problem behaviors. It affects the people around the learner, and these people agree to the behavior change and support its development after the intervention is removed.

Natural language training is a set of procedures used by behavior analysts that rely heavily on mand training in the natural environment. These procedures include incidental teaching, functional communication training, and pivotal response treatment, which are used to mirror the natural areas of language use for children. Behavior analytic language training procedures run along a continuum from highly restrictive such as discrete trial training to very nonrestrictive conversationally-based strategies. Natural language falls in the middle of these procedures.

Behavioral marital therapy, sometimes called behavioral couples therapy, has its origins in behaviorism and is a form of behavior therapy. The theory is rooted in social learning theory and behavior analysis. As a model, it is constantly being revised as new research presents.

Functional Behavior Assessment (FBA) is an ongoing process of collecting information with a goal of identifying the environmental variables that control a problem or target behavior. The purpose of the assessment is to prove and aid the effectiveness of the interventions or treatments used to help eliminate the problem behavior. Through functional behavior assessments, we have learned that there are complex patterns to people's seemingly unproductive behaviors. It is important to not only pay attention to consequences that follow the behavior but also the antecedent that evokes the behavior. More work needs to be done in the future with functional assessment including balancing precision and efficiency, being more specific with variables involved and a more smooth transition from assessment to intervention.

Community reinforcement approach and family training (CRAFT) is a behavior therapy approach in psychotherapy for treating addiction developed by Robert J. Meyers in the late 1970s. Meyers worked with Nathan Azrin in the early 1970s whilst he was developing his own community reinforcement approach (CRA) which uses operant conditioning techniques to help people learn to reduce the power of their addictions and enjoy healthy living. Meyers adapted CRA to create CRAFT, which he described as CRA that "works through family members." CRAFT combines CRA with family training to equip concerned significant others (CSOs) of addicts with supportive techniques to encourage their loved ones to begin and continue treatment and provides them with defences against addiction's damaging effects on themselves.

References

  1. ↑ Mash, Eric J. (2019). Abnormal child psychology. Wolfe, David A. (David Allen), 1951- (Seventh ed.). Boston, MA. ISBN   9781337624268. OCLC   1022139949.
  2. ↑ Kanter, J.W.; Cautilli, J.D.; Busch, A.M. & Baruch, D.E. (2005). Toward a Comprehensive Functional Analysis of Depressive Behavior: Five Environmental Factors and a Possible Sixth and Seventh. The Behavior Analyst Today, 6(1), 65–81.BAO
  3. ↑ Sampl, S.; Wakai, S.; Trestman, R. & Keeney, E.M. (2008). Functional Analysis of Behavior in Corrections: Empowering Inmates in Skills Training Groups. Journal of Behavior Analysis of Offender and Victim: Treatment and Prevention, 1(4), 42–51 BAO
  4. ↑ Angela Waguespack, Terrence Vaccaro & Lauren Continere (2006). Functional Behavioral Assessment and Intervention with Emotional/Behaviorally Disordered Students: In Pursuit of State of the Art. IJBCT, 4(2), 463–74 BAO.
  5. ↑ Delfs, C.H. & Campbell, J.M. (2010). A quantitative synthesis of developmental disability research: The impact of functional assessment methodology on treatment effectiveness. The Behavior Analyst Today, 11(1), 4–19 BAO.
  6. ↑ Gresham, F.; McIntyre, L.L.; Olson-Tinker, H.; Dolstra, L.; McLaughlin, V. & Van, M. (2004). Relevance of functional behavioral assessment research for school based behavioral intervention and positive behavioral support. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 25, 19–37.
  7. ↑ Thompson, R. H., & Iwata, B. A. (2001). A comparison of outcomes from descriptive and functional analyses of problem behavior. "Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis", 40, 333-338.
  8. ↑ Smith, C. A., Smith, R. G., Dracobly, J. D., & Pace, A. P. (2012). Multiple-respondent anecdotal assessments: An analysis of interrupter agreement and correspondence with analogue assessment outcomes. "Journal of Applied Behavior Analysi"s, 45, 779-795.
  9. ↑ Bonem, M.; Stanely-Klime, K.L. & Corbin, M. (2008). A behavioral approach to domestic violence: A functional assessment based on batter contingencies. Journal of Behavior Analysis of Offender and Victim: Treatment and Prevention, 1(2) 210–3 BAO.
  10. ↑ Gadaire, D.M.; Kelley, M.E. & DeRosa, N.M. (2010). Research Needed for Focusing on Additional Generality of Applied Behavior Analysis. The Behavior Analyst Today, 11(1), 49–58 BAO.
  11. ↑ "World Center for Behavior Analysis". Archived from the original on February 10, 2011.
  12. ↑ "UK Society for Behaviour Analysis".
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