Descriptive and experimental analyses of variables maintaining self-injurious behavior.
Quick notes can sort social from nonsocial SIB, but you still need a four-condition test to tell attention from escape.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team watched five adults who hurt themselves. They wrote down what happened right before and after each hit or bite.
Next they ran a short functional analysis. They tested four rooms: alone, play, hard tasks with help, and easy tasks with praise.
They wanted to see if the note-taking method gave the same answer as the test method.
What they found
Both ways agreed on one thing: the behavior was either social or nonsocial.
But the notes could not tell the difference between “wants attention” and “wants to escape work.” Only the test could split those two.
How this fits with other research
McMillan et al. (1999) took the next step. When their test was unclear, they tried sensory extinction alone. The SIB stopped, proving it was automatic.
Madden et al. (2003) went the other way. They used only natural notes and still found tight links between staff attention and SIB. Their trick was counting seconds and using matching equations.
Rooker et al. (2020) show why the split matters. Kids whose tests gave muddy results had more cuts and bruises. Clear function means safer kids.
Why it matters
Start with ABC notes if you have no time. They give you a fast social-or-not vote. Then run a four-room test to pick attention or escape. That second step keeps you from building the wrong plan and keeps your client safer.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Independent descriptive (correlational) and functional (experimental) analyses were conducted to determine the extent to which the two methods would yield data supporting similar conclusions about variables maintaining the self-injurious behavior (SIB) of 6 subjects. For the descriptive analyses, subjects were observed in their residences and at training sites at various times each day while observers recorded naturally occurring sequences of specified subject and staff behaviors. The subjects also participated in a day program for the assessment and treatment of SIB, in which they were exposed to functional analyses that manipulated potential maintaining variables in multielement designs. Both sets of data were analyzed via conditional probabilities to identify relevant antecedent and consequent events for subjects' SIB. Using outcomes of the experimental analysis as the standard for comparison, results indicated that the descriptive analysis was useful in identifying the extent to which SIB was related to social versus nonsocial contingencies, but was limited in its ability to distinguish between positive and negative reinforcement (i.e., attention versus escape).
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1993 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1993.26-293