A comparison of brief and extended session duration functional analyses
Five-minute FA sessions spot escape functions just as well as ten-minute ones.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Griffith et al. (2021) compared two FA lengths.
They ran 5-minute and 10-minute sessions for children with autism.
Each child got both lengths on different days.
The goal was to see if the shorter session still found the same escape function.
What they found
Every child showed the same escape function in both lengths.
After the FA, the team used brief DRA.
Problem behavior dropped and communication rose.
Five minutes gave the same answer as ten.
How this fits with other research
Jolliffe et al. (1999) once said FA results can flip after a few weeks.
That sounds scary, but they tested different kids and longer gaps.
Griffith’s side-by-side comparison shows short windows stay stable.
Nevill et al. (2019) took brief FA even further.
They moved the whole process into family homes.
Parents ran the sessions and still saw big, lasting drops in problem behavior.
Together the papers say: shorten the session, keep the power, then teach the family.
Why it matters
You can finish an FA before lunch.
Five-minute sessions cut assessment time in half while giving the same escape answer.
Less time in the clinic means more time for teaching and less stress for the child.
Try the 5-minute format first; if the graph is clear, move straight to treatment.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Many behavior analysts do not conduct a functional analysis (FA) prior to treatment in a clinical setting (e.g., Roscoe et al., 2015). When asked for an explanation, respondents commonly report that an FA is too time consuming. One way to address this perceived constraint is to evaluate the utility of an abbreviated FA with 5-min session durations. In the current study, 2 independent FAs, 1 with 5-min sessions and 1 with 10-min sessions, were conducted for the problem behavior of 5 individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). For all participants, the 5- and 10-min session duration FAs yielded the same identified function of problem behavior: escape from demands. A brief differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA) analysis was subsequently conducted and found to be effective at decreasing problem behavior and increasing an appropriate communication response across participants. These findings demonstrate the utility of conducting an FA using briefer session durations followed by a brief DRA analysis.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2021 · doi:10.1002/jaba.820