Identifying Possible Contingencies During Descriptive Analyses of Severe Behavior Disorders

Abstract

Contingencies of reinforcement involve, in part, relations between behavior and subsequent environmental events. In this study we observed 11 individuals with developmental disabilities and severe behavior problems while they interacted with their primary care providers in simulated environments (hospital therapy rooms). We compared the probability of obtaining attention, escape from instructional demands, or access to materials following instances of problem behavior with the background probability of those events. However, the focus of our analysis was the evaluation of comparative probabilities ("contingency values") in the context of relevant establishing operations such as diverted attention, instructional demands, and restricted access to materials. Results showed that the method was useful in identifying relations between behavior and subsequent environmental events. Implications for linking descriptive and functional analyses are discussed, and difficulties in identifying naturally occurring contingencies are considered.

A Comparison of Descriptive and Functional Analyses of Inappropriate Mealtime Behavior

“…Duration measures were recorded immediately upon the occurrence of caregiver behavior and recording ended 3 s after the occurrence of that specific behavior had ceased (Vollmer et al, 2001). Duration measures included escape, defined as removing a bite away from the child, regardless of the distance (non-self-feeder), or in the absence of a bite presentation (selffeeder), if 10 s elapsed following an instruction to eat and the child did not take a bite or the caregiver did not provide another instruction.…”

“…Following the descriptive assessment, the data were analyzed for all caregiver-fed meals to calculate the conditional probabilities of caregiver responses following IMB, using methods described by Borrero et al (2010) and similar to those described by previous researchers (Borrero & Borrero, 2008;Vollmer et al, 2001). Conditional probabilities were analyzed using Instant Analyzer ® with an interval size of 5 s, meaning that for each occurrence of child behavior, the Instant Analyzer ® program lagged forward 5 s in the raw data to determine if a specific occurrence of caregiver behavior occurred.…”

“…Conditional probabilities were calculated for caregiver responses following IMB including: probability of attention (coaxing, comfort, and reprimands), probability of escape, and probability of access to tangibles. Stimulus changes for duration events (i.e., evaluation within potential establishing operations, see Vollmer et al 2001 for a description) were taken into account for all calculations separately. That is, escape was evaluated in the context of demands, and access to tangibles was evaluated in the context of restricted access to tangibles.…”

“…To identify attention as a potential concern, it is necessary to determine how often the parent attends to the child in general. Descriptive assessment research has stressed the importance of having a relevant comparison when evaluating conditional probabilities (i.e., the unconditional probability of an event; Thompson & Borrero, 2011;Vollmer, Borrero, Wright, Van Camp, & Lalli, 2001). Borrero et al (2010) conducted an analysis of conditional probabilities during caregiver-fed meals to identify potential contingencies for IMB and food acceptance and to determine how frequently caregivers provided the consequences evaluated during functional analyses.…”

Functional Analysis With Typically Developing Children: Best Practice or Too Early to Tell?: In Response to Hanley (2012)

“…In a contingency space analysis, the probability of an event (such as peer attention) occurring independently is plotted against the probability of that event following problem behavior. Events that are more likely to occur follow challenging behavior than independently of that behavior represent "positive contingencies" (e.g., Vollmer, Borrero, Wright, Van Camp, & Lalli, 2001), which may be reinforcers for behavior.…”