Ø  Behavior can be understood by analyzing ABC’s

Ø  Behavior must be quantifiable in some way (outcome) that can be measured

Ø  Establish report

Ø  Tends to be more heavily therapist lead

Ø  Very specific

Ø  Not as concerned with biographical and history…more concerned about immediate behavior problem

Ø  More tied into treatment than diagnosis

Ø  problem identification interview

§  Defining the problem, severity, frequency, most/least likely to occur…

§  Operationalize the target behavior

§  Goals

Ø  problem analysis interview

§  Use information collected through behavioral observations

§  Were our operational definitions correct? Did we collect the right data?

§  Gather information about the environment to take into account when designing treatment

§  Develop treatment plan

Ø  - problem evaluation interview

§  Discuss data collected during treatment

§  Is the treatment effective?

§  Continue/modify/throw away and start over

Ø  (write down everything you see)

§  More susceptible to observer bias

Ø  - recording any instance of behavior that occurs during your specified interval time

§  Not good for high rate behaviors

§  Want behaviors with clear beginning and end

§  Easier to train

§  Do not help with determining function of behavior!

§  break up a time period (day) into specified intervals and record when the behavior occurs (effective method at determining times of day in which behavior is likely/not likely to occur)

·         Can help you determine when to do observations

Ø  Duration measures/observations

§  How long something happens

§  Clear beginning and end, not high frequency

§  Latency- how long after an event until behavior occurs

§  Inter-response time- how long is it in btw behaviors

Ø  Interval recording (partial/whole/momentary)

§  Breaking up observation period into equal intervals

§  partial- more likely to over-estimate behavior

·         better for behaviors you want to decrease

§  whole- more likely to under-estimate behavior

·         better for behaviors you want to increase

Ø  permanent products

§  what is left-over from the behavior

§  ex- how many problems were completed, how many lines were written, how many stickers were earned

§  should design treatments with permanent products bc it acts as treatment integrity

v  Psychometric properties of behavioral assessment

Ø  Not concerned with external validity bc the focus is the individual

Ø  Not concerned with test-retest reliability bc we expect change over time

Ø  More concerned with:

§  Inter-rater reliability

§  Content validity- measuring what you say your measuring

§  Internal validity- measures are free of confounds and are measuring what you mean to measure

Ø  functional behavior assessment

§  Summation of a variety of data

·         Descriptive assessment, functional assessment, etc.

Ø  FBA vs. FA

§  FA is an experimental manipulation of environmental variables to test for behavioral function

·         Causal relationship

§  FBA can include an FA

§  FBA in generally is a group of data collection methods that look at ABCs to determine function and design a treatment to reduce problem behavior and increase functionally appropriate behavior

·         Correlation relationship

Ø  Behavior modification-

§  not focused on function, more basically reinforcement/punishment

§  Wrong match could make problem worse

§  Does not give a functional alternative

Ø  interviews, checklists, review of records

§  Caution against relying heavily on indirect assessments

§  Vulnerable to bias

Ø  Establishing operations (motivating operations)

§  States/conditions/events that alter the effectiveness of a reinforcer

§  Alter the rate of behavior occurring to access those reinforcers

Ø  Discriminative stimulus (Sd)

§  Any stimulus that signals the availability of a reinforcer

§  Ex- mom is the Sd for attention