Injury characteristics across functional classes of self‐injurious behavior
Bad injuries often signal automatic SIB and fuzzy FA results—use injury logs to triage your next assessment.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team looked at the kids with developmental delay who hurt themselves.
They matched each injury record to the function found in a full FA.
They wanted to see which SIB functions cause the worst damage.
What they found
Subtype 2 automatic SIB caused the worst injuries.
Kids whose FA showed only one clear function had fewer injuries.
When the FA results were mixed or unclear, injuries piled up.
How this fits with other research
Taylor et al. (1993) first showed us how to run FAs for SIB.
Rooker et al. (2020) now uses those same FA labels to predict danger.
Baker et al. (2025) widens the lens. They found kids with ASD+ADHD get hurt more in everyday life.
Together the papers say: first find the function, then watch the injury pattern, then add safety skills if impulsivity is high.
Why it matters
You can scan injury logs like a red flag. If the wounds are bad and the FA points to automatic reinforcement, treat that case as urgent. If the FA is muddy, injuries will likely rise—run clearer test conditions or add protective gear.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Self-injurious behavior (SIB) is inherently problematic because it can lead to injuries, including those that are quite severe and may result in loss of function or permanent disfigurement. The current study replicated and extended Rooker et al. (2018) by classifying the physical characteristics of injuries across groups of individuals with automatically maintained SIB (ASIB Subtypes 2 and 3) and socially maintained SIB. Individuals with Subtype 2 ASIB had the most frequent and severe injuries. Further, an inverse relation was found between the level of differentiation in the functional analysis and the number of injuries across groups. Studying the response products of SIB (the injuries) documents the risks associated with SIB, justifies the need for research and the intensive intervention, and advances knowledge of SIB. Additional research is needed to replicate these findings, and determine the variables that produce different characteristics of injury secondary to SIB.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2020 · doi:10.1002/jaba.664