Outcome summaries of latency-based functional analyses conducted in hospital inpatient units

Lambert and her team ran 18 latency-based functional analyses on an inpatient hospital unit.

Each child had autism and severe problem behavior.

Instead of waiting for 10 bites of aggression or 20 screams, they stopped each test condition the moment the first response happened.

They recorded how many seconds that took.

The whole FA took under an hour and no one got hurt.

The clock told the story in 8 of 18 kids.

Short latencies in one condition and long ones in another showed clear functions.

Attention, escape, or automatic reinforcement popped out without long tantrum loops.

For the other the kids the lines stayed flat; the test stayed safe but gave no answer.

Johnson et al. (2009) used the same stopwatch trick first, but only to rank which chores to put in the escape box.

Lambert kept the timer running for the whole FA and made it the main yardstick.

Tager-Flusberg et al. (2016) showed us how to calm minimally verbal kids so we can test them at all.

Put the two together: use brief, gentle exposure first, then let the latency clock do the talking.

You now have a 30- to 45-minute option when a standard FA is too risky.

Start the stopwatch, end the condition at first bite or scream, and plot the seconds.

If you see a clear split, write your behavior plan and move on.

If the lines stay flat, switch to another method—no harm done and the day is still young.