Sleep deprivation, allergy symptoms, and negatively reinforced problem behavior.

The team ran analogue functional analyses on students. They wanted to see if sleep loss or allergy flare-ups changed problem behavior.

Before each FA session they noted how the child slept and how stuffy or itchy the child felt. Then they watched if escape behavior rose.

For some kids, being tired or sniffly made problem behavior jump. The same child could look “attention-maintained” on a good day and “escape-maintained” on a rough day.

Results were mixed: not every child changed, but enough did to cloud the FA picture.

Abel et al. (2018) extends this idea to autistic kids in full-day ABA. They found chronic poor sleep, not one bad night, predicts higher self-injury and repetitive behavior the next day.

Rutland et al. (1996) used the same single-case FA set-up. They showed that what happens right before the session—like a tough class—can also inflate demand-condition aggression.

Together the three papers warn: biological states and immediate context can fake out your FA. Check sleep, allergies, and prior events before you trust the graph.

If you run an FA while a child is stuffy or exhausted, you may pick the wrong function and build the wrong plan. Quick sleep and allergy screens take five minutes and save weeks of off-target treatment. Start every assessment day with two questions: “How did you sleep?” and “How are you feeling?”