Functional communication training (FCT) is a widely used treatment for individuals with developmental disabilities who exhibit severe behavior problems. One inherent challenge of employing FCT as a treatment in the community is that reinforcement for appropriate communication cannot always be immediate or even possible in some circumstances. Of…

Functional behavioral assessment (FBA) is the process of identifying the events in the environment that consistently precede and follow challenging behavior. The use of FBA has increased significantly following the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1997, which mandated FBAs be conducted when children with…

Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence (A-B-C) recordings are often used in school settings as part of a functional assessment. A number of limitations are associated with A-B-C recordings, and a novel approach for describing data from A-B-C recordings is to compute conditional probabilities that can be graphed in the general operant contingency space to…

Research has shown that noncontingent escape (NCE) and functional communication training (FCT) can be effective treatments for challenging behavior. One limitation of the NCE procedure is the failure to provide explicit contingencies for learning an alternative adaptive behavior. Additionally, problems can arise with a FCT procedure. In this…

This review evaluates research on the treatment of challenging behavior in school settings for students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Electronic database searches were carried out to identify studies published between 1995 and 2005. Twenty-six studies were identified. A variety of procedures were implemented in these studies to decrease…

There has been much research concerning functional assessment over the past 20 years, but several important research considerations have yet to be explained. One is the comparison of different types of functional assessment (e.g., experimental functional analysis and non-experimental functional assessment). The current study aims to compare the…

Although FBA has been a familiar term to those in special education for over 30 years, its formal inclusion into IDEA is relatively recent. Currently, agreement as to the nature, context, and application of the FBA process is, at best, confusing and, at worst, inadequate to direct elective practice in schools. An analysis of the issues that define…

Faced with limited resources, schools require tools that increase the accuracy and efficiency of functional behavioral assessment. Yarbrough and Carr (2000) provided evidence that informant confidence ratings of the likelihood of problem behavior in specific situations offered a promising tool for predicting the accuracy of function-based…

Since the reauthorization of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA; 1997) through the current reauthorization (IDEA 2004), disciplinary procedures and functional behavioral assessment (FBA) have been widely used in school districts to assist in the prevention and amelioration of problem behaviors. Although researchers have…

The authors examined the relation between variables maintaining problem behavior and reading performance for elementary-age students. Participants were 51 students in Grades 4, 5, and 6 who had received two or more office discipline referrals in 2003-2004. Students were grouped by teacher-indicated function of problem behavior. The prevalence of…

A functional assessment interview was conducted with care providers of 100 children (ages 2-5) with autism regarding reinforcement contingencies contributing to maintenance of disruptive behavior. Gaining access to perseverative activities and escaping demands while engaged in these activities frequently contributed to disruptive behavior in the…

Illustrates and evaluates the reliability and accuracy of an efficient performance-based behavioral recording procedure to record both appropriate and problem behaviors with persons with developmental disabilities. The results demonstrate that performance-based behavioral recording procedures are precise and efficient methods of recording…

Evaluates the concept of "establishing operation" (EO) in the functional analysis of problem behavior in people with developmental disabilities. Suggestions for detecting "conditioned establishing operations" are offered. Also discusses the development of treatment strategies that seek to modify EOs, extinguish EOs, and modify…

This discussion of positive behavior support for people with disabilities identifies four themes: (1) behavior support should reduce problem behavior and affect how a person lives; (2) functional assessment is the foundation for understanding patterns of problem behavior; (3) behavior support should be comprehensive in structure and scope; and (4)…

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…