The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

Current standards of practice in psychological and educational services dictate the need for ascertaining the function of challenging behaviors before treating them and for behavioral interventions to be based on the function of behavior. The current study compares indirect, descriptive, and experimental functional assessments, across ten children with autism, representing a range of ages and topographies of challenging behavior. Experimental assessments produced clear results in the majority of cases, whereas indirect and descriptive assessments produced less consistent results. Current standards of practice in psychological and educational services dictate the need for ascertaining the function of challenging behaviors before treating them and for behavioral interventions to be based on the function of behavior. The term “Functional Behavioral Assessment” has come to refer to the overall process of determining the function of behavior for any particular individual. At least three broad categories of functional assessments have been developed, including indirect, descriptive, and experimental procedures.

Indirect assessments do not require observation of the behavior in question and simply involve interviewing caregivers who are familiar with the behavior. Indirect assessments require the least training, time, and fiscal resources to implement. However, previous research has typically shown that indirect assessments do not always produce reliable or conclusive results regarding the function of behavior.

Descriptive assessments require a trained individual to directly observe the target behavior and collect data on antecedents and consequences of the behavior. The benefits of descriptive assessments are that they allow for observation of the behavior in the natural environment in which it actually occurs on a day to day basis. Limitations of descriptive assessments are that they may require a significant amount of training on the part of the assessor and that they may not always produce conclusive results. For example, clinicians often report that the behavior may simply not occur when the assessor is present, thereby precluding the assessor from recording behavioral antecedents and consequences.

Experimental assessments entail intentional manipulation of antecedents and consequences that may be functionally related to the target behavior. That is, potential discriminative stimuli, establishing operations, and reinforcers are presented and withheld in a systematic attempt to identify which, if any, environmental variables appear to maintain the target behavior. A significant amount of research has demonstrated that experimental assessments produce clear and conclusive results. However, experimental assessments are sometimes said to require excessive amounts of time and highly-trained staff to implement. In addition, some object to the intentional reinforcement of the target behavior, even if for very brief periods (e.g., 10 minute sessions).

Although experimental functional analyses are common in empirical research on behavioral intervention, indirect and descriptive functional assessment procedures may be more commonly used in clinical and educational practice and this difference between research and practice does not appear to be supported by scientific evidence. To that end, little research has systematically compared indirect, descriptive, and experimental functional assessments, let alone with participants within the autism population.

The current study compares indirect, descriptive, and experimental functional assessments, across ten children with autism, representing a range of ages and topographies of challenging behavior.

We implemented the Questions About Behavioral Function (QABF) for indirect assessments. The QABF was administered with the caregiver who was identified as having the longest period of experience with participants' target problem behavior.

We conducted antecedent-behavior-consequence (ABC) recording for descriptive assessments. These assessments involved directly observing the client in his/her natural environment for 1-2 hours and recording any and all antecedents and consequences of problem behavior. The antecedents and consequences were then summarized and patterns indicating behavioral function were analyzed.

We conducted “standard” functional analyses for experimental assessments. The experimental assessment sessions were conducted in the clients' natural therapy environment.

Our results indicated that experimental assessments produced clear results in the majority of cases, whereas indirect and descriptive assessments produced less consistent results.

Implications for clinical practice will be discussed. Specifically, the difference in training, time, and fiscal resources required for the different assessment procedures will be balanced against the apparent difference in their effectiveness. In addition, we will discuss some practical steps that truly applied settings could take toward making experimental functional assessments more available to their clientele.

Learning Objectives: