Association for Behavior Analysis International

In this symposium we present recent research regarding the treatment of stereotypical and challenging behaviors associated with individuals with developmental disabilities. The first paper examines the effectiveness of a multi-component treatment to reduce problem behaviors associated with behavior inflexibility. Behavior inflexibility can disrupt daily living and learning opportunities. In this study, functional communication training, extinction, and a signal to delayed reinforcement were effective in reducing such behavioral inflexibility. The second paper investigates the effectiveness of a treatment procedure to reduce a self-injurious behavior, which required daily medical treatment for a young child with autism. An attempt to match possible reinforcement properties of the self-injurious behavior resulted in an effective replacement behavior. The third paper evaluates the use of a latency functional analysis to identify the function of elopement among a young boy with an intellectual disability. Functional analysis of elopement is notably difficult due to confounding variables associated with participant retrieval during the assessment process. Latency functional analysis is explored as an alternative functional assessment methodology. Results of the assessment were verified via functional communication training

Insistence on sameness, stereotyped movements, and resistance to change constitute a core diagnostic characteristic of autism spectrum disorders (ASD, American Psychiatry Association, 2000). This lack of behavioral flexibility (Wahlberg & Jordan, 2001) generally interferes in the individuals functional life, and can lead to deficits in problem solving and coping skills (Grenn et al., 2007). If not treated, these inflexible behaviors disrupt the daily life of these children and their families and impede learning opportunities and generalization of skills (Green et al., 2007). Assessment of specific daily situations in which insistence on sameness occurs (Green et al., 2006) and functional analysis of these inflexible behaviors are important aspects to plan and implement an appropriate intervention to promote behavior flexibility. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of functional communication training with extinction and signaled delay to reinforcement on escape-maintained challenging behaviors associated with behavioral inflexibility in young children with autism. Preliminary results show the intervention was effective in reducing behavioral inflexibility and that participants generalized learned replacement behaviors across stimuli.

Elopement is a potentially dangerous problem behavior prevalent among individuals with developmental disabilities. However, functional analysis of elopement presents unique challenges including difficulties identifying and arranging idiosyncratic contextual variables and participant retrieval during functional analysis conditions. In the current study, we implemented a latency functional analysis with an eight-year old child with intellectual disability, in which the dependent measure was latency to elopement. Following the latency functional analysis, a functional communication intervention was developed and its effectiveness in decreasing elopement was evaluated using an ABAB design. Findings suggest that latency functional analysis may be a suitable methodology to identify the operant function of elopement.