A method for conducting culturally responsive functional analyses with bilingual children and evaluating language effects

Carrera et al. (2025) built a culturally friendly FA for bilingual kids. They ran the same FA sessions in English and Spanish. Then they graphed the data twice: once for each language.

The team worked with children who had developmental delays. They wanted to see if the same behavior served different purposes in each language.

When they split the data by language, the functions sometimes changed. A behavior that looked attention-maintained in English looked escape-maintained in Spanish.

The paper shows the method, not a head count. It proves you can miss a function if you lump both languages together.

Neely et al. (2020) saw FCT taught only in English fall apart at home for Spanish-speaking families. Carrera moves that warning into the FA step itself.

Banerjee et al. (2022) showed bilingual FCT plus repair steps beat single-language FCT. Carrera now says check both languages before you even pick the FCT form.

Lang et al. (2008) found FA results differ between clinic and classroom. Carrera adds language as another layer that can flip the outcome.

If you run one FA and average both languages, you might pick the wrong function and the wrong treatment. Split the data on your next bilingual case. You could see two different functions and plan two different interventions—one per language—so the behavior plan works at home and at school.