Functional Assessment: Contributions and Future Directions

Abstract

Functional assessment is at once redefining the standards for clinical interventions and reemphasizing the importance of studying basic behavioral mechanisms. This commentary describes one perception of what we are learning from current research on functional assessment and suggests directions for the future.DESCRIPTORS: functional analysisThe purpose of functional assessment is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of behavioral treatment. This issue of JABA offers an opportunity to review the advances in functional assessment technology over the past decade and to reexamine the challenges we face today. In many ways the recent attention given to assessment has taken us back to the foundations of applied behavior analysis and has improved the link between our understanding of behavioral mechanisms and the quality of behavioral interventions. We owe a significant debt to those who have led this effort. For the purpose of this commentary, functional assessment refers to the full range of strategies used to identify the antecedents and consequences that control problem behavior. The term functional analysis is reserved for the manipulation of environmental events under experimental conditions with systematic observation ofbehavior. Functional analysis is one approach to functional assessment. I see the following as important messages from recent efforts to build a practical technology of functional assessment.

O ensino de avaliação funcional descritiva para professores na alfabetização em língua portuguesa nas séries iniciais

“…Admite-se que a identificação e a caracterização de propriedades funcionais resultam da utilização de estratégias indiretas (entrevistas, questionários) e diretas (análises descritivas narrativas baseadas na observação direta de eventos sequenciais), bem como na manipulação de condições ambientais antecedentes e consequentes à ocorrência de determinadas respostas (Daly, Witt, Martens & Dool, 1997;Horner, 1994;Iwata & cols., 2000;Mace, 1994;Mace & Lalli, 1991;Moore e cols., 2002;Neef & Iwata, 1994;Noell e cols., 2000;Ulian, 2007;Wallace e cols., 2004).…”

Paradoxical Patterns in the Measurement of Hyperactivity

“…Many of these systems allow observers to conduct functional assessments in conjunction with direct observations. To the extent that maladaptive behaviors can be systematically identified as occurring at higher probability within particular contexts, such direct observation systems constitute one type of functional assessment (e.g., Broussard & Northup, 1995, 1997Cooper, Wacker, Sasso, Reimers, & Donn, 1992;Dunlap, Kern-Dumlap, Clarke, & Robbins, 1991;Horner, 1994). The goal of functional/ descriptive assessments is to reliably identify particular conditions that interact with and sustain maladaptive behaviors (Iwata, Dorsey, Slifer, Bauman, & Richman, 1982).…”

The Widening World of Functional Assessment: Comments on Four Manuals and Beyond

“…The notion has been implicit since the discipline's earliest days (e.g., Bijou, Peterson, & Ault, 1968), and it gained conceptual (Carr, 1977) and methodological (Iwata, Dorsey, Slifer, Bauman, & Richman, 1982/1994 precision in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was not until the 1980s, however, that functional assessment began to assume the broad, foundational role that it now claims (Mace & Roberts, 1993).…”