Skin-picking is a type of self-injurious behavior involving the pulling, scratching, lancing, digging, or gouging of one's own body. It is associated with social impairment, and increased medical and mental health concerns. While there are several reports showing that skin-picking is common in individuals with developmental disabilities, knowledge…

Due to the relative inability of individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) to provide an accurate and reliable self-report, assessment in this population is more difficult than with individuals in the general population. As a result, assessment procedures must be adjusted to compensate for the relative lack of information that the individual…

We conducted functional analyses of two individuals' aggressive behavior. Results of each of the initial functional analyses were inconclusive with respect to the role of social reinforcers in the maintenance of the behavior. Further assessment was conducted to clarify the role of social reinforcers. One individual's results suggested social…

Great strides have been made in the development of skills and procedures to aid children with developmental disabilities to establish maximum independence and quality of life. Paramount among the treatment methods that have empirical support are treatments based on applied behavior analysis. These methods are often very labor intensive. Thus,…

We explored functional variables for aggressive behavior in 87 individuals with moderate to borderline intellectual disability who lived in a residential facility. For this purpose we used the "Questions About Behavioral Function" scale (QABF; Matson, J., & Vollmer, T. (1995). "Questions About Behavioral Function (QABF)". Baton Rouge, LA:…

The development of experimental functional analysis and more recently functional analysis checklists have become common technologies for evaluating antecedent events and the consequences of problematic behaviors. Children and developmentally disabled persons across the life span with challenging behaviors have been the primary focus of this…

Background: Kinship theory suggests that genomic imprinting could account for phenotypic behaviors that increase (in the case of Angelman syndrome) or decrease (for Prader-Willi syndrome) the drive to access social resources (adult contact) depending on the imprinting parent-of-origin. Difficult to manage behaviors, such as aggression that is…

A large body of literature exists describing the harmful effects of prenatal drug exposure on infant and child development. However, there is a paucity of research examining strategies to ameliorate sequelae such as externalizing behavior problems. In the present study, functional analysis procedures were used to assess challenging behavior…

This study examined socially appropriate and destructive behavior in unconstrained natural environments using a matching law analysis (MLA) of real time observational data. The participants were two school-age children and one adult with mild to moderate cognitive disabilities. Event lagged sequential analysis (SQA) provided the obtained rates of…

In this study, the outcomes of descriptive, experimental and informant-based methods of functional assessment were compared in four individuals with developmental disabilities who showed problem behaviors. Results indicated that the descriptive and experimental assessments were concordant in only one of the four cases whilst informant-based and…

Recent studies have used pretreatment analyses, termed competing stimulus assessments, to identify items that most effectively displace the aberrant behavior of individuals with developmental disabilities. In most studies, there appeared to have been no systematic basis for selecting the sampling period (ranging from 30 s to 10 min) in which items…

This paper describes a highly structured assessment protocol with objective behavioral measures for joint attention responding and initiation. The assessment was given to 26 children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders and 21 typically developing children, aged two to four years. Interobserver agreement was high for all behavioral measures.…

This study examined certain psychometric properties of the questions about behavioral function (QABF) scale. The QABF was completed on 118 problem behaviours presented by 40 young people with severe intellectual disabilities, and measures of inter-rater reliability, internal consistency, and construct validity were calculated overall and for…

The analog functional analysis involves the manipulation of pre-determined antecedent and consequent events and typically is conducted by trained experimenters. Inclusion of idiosyncratic variables in the analog functional analysis may affect responding. Inclusion of caregivers is one potential antecedent that may affect problem behavior. The…

Prior research has suggested that fixed-time (FT) schedules of reinforcement do not necessarily preclude the acquisition of appropriate behavior (e.g., mands) when combined with differential reinforcement (DRA). These studies also note that dense FT schedules are more likely to interfere with DRA packages than lean FT schedules. In the current…