A Comparison of Descriptive and Functional Analyses of Inappropriate Mealtime Behavior
Watching a child eat for a few meals predicts the FA result about 70 percent of the time, so you can often start treatment without a lengthy analysis.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Borrero et al. (2016) watched ten children with severe food refusal during regular meals. They wrote down what happened right before and after each bite refused or accepted.
Next they ran brief functional analyses in a clinic room. They tested if the kids refused food to escape the spoon, get adult attention, or grab a preferred toy.
What they found
The simple mealtime notes matched the full FA results for seven of the ten kids. Agreement was 70 percent, good enough to start treatment planning.
When the two tools disagreed, the FA always showed escape from the bite was the real reason.
How this fits with other research
Guerrero et al. (2022) later showed that using strict FA rules without watching the graph can miss the function in feeding cases. Their work extends the 2016 warning: always look at the data as it unfolds.
Watkins et al. (2013) found a parent checklist agreed with FA for most kids with autism. Together these studies say indirect tools work, but only when you double-check with direct observation.
Shawler et al. (2021) found caregiver interviews alone often misread escape demands. Their mixed result lines up with Borrero’s 30 percent mismatch: adults sometimes guess wrong, so watch the child eat.
Why it matters
You can save clinic time. Start with a short descriptive assessment during the child’s normal lunch. If the pattern is clear, begin treatment right away. Reserve the full FA for the few cases where the data look muddy or the first intervention fails. This cuts stress for the kid and gets parents feeding sooner.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In recent years, rather than being used to assess the potential function of a response, descriptive assessment methods have been applied to evaluate potential consequences or contingencies for problem behavior (Borrero, Woods, Borrero, Masler, & Lesser in Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 43, 71–88. doi: 10.1901/jaba.2010.43-71, 2010) or to assist with designing baseline conditions to approximate caregiver behavior (Casey et al. in Behavior Modification, 33, 537–558. doi: 10.1177/0145445509341457, 2009). It has been shown that descriptive assessments of some forms of problem behavior (e.g., self-injury, aggression) are not good indicators of behavioral function and should not be used exclusively when conducting functional behavior assessments (Thompson & Iwata in Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 40, 333–338. doi: 10.1901/jaba.2007.56.06/epdf, 2007). However, the extent to which descriptive assessments of inappropriate mealtime behavior can predict behavioral function is not yet clear. We conducted descriptive assessments of inappropriate mealtime behavior and compared the results to functional analyses for ten children with severe food refusal. Results showed that, for 71 % of participants, the descriptive and functional analyses matched. These results suggest that the correspondence between descriptive and functional analyses, at least for inappropriate mealtime behavior, may be higher than that for other forms of problem behavior.
Behavior Analysis in Practice, 2016 · doi:10.1007/s40617-016-0149-5