Rules of engagement: toward an analysis of staff responses to challenging behavior.
Staff follow hidden rules; find and rewrite those rules before you rewrite the behavior plan.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Szatmari et al. (1994) wrote a think-piece, not an experiment. They asked why staff often respond to hitting or screaming in ways that make it worse.
The authors said staff follow hidden rules like "stop the noise fast" or "never let them win." They urged analysts to test what rules really drive staff hands.
What they found
The paper gives no new data. It maps a path: first find the rule, then change it, then watch staff behavior shift.
The core claim is simple. If you skip this step, your behavior plan may crash because the rule you gave is not the rule they use.
How this fits with other research
Gutierrez et al. (1998) hands you a tool. Their "silent dog" protocol shows how to catch self-made rules in real time. Use it to check the 1994 idea in your own clinic.
Koegel et al. (2014) ran the numbers. They proved a clear daily target plus instant feedback lifts staff compliance from 21% to 86%. Their study gives a live example of swapping old rules for new ones.
Matson et al. (2004) adds a twist. They showed that who runs the functional analysis changes the outcome. This warns us that staff identity itself is a rule variable, just as P et al. suspected.
Why it matters
Next time a plan fails, don’t just retrain. Interview the staff. Ask what rule they think they are following. Write it down. Test if that rule pays off for them. Then redesign the pay-off, not just the prompt. This small shift can save hours of retraining and reduce client escalation.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Through observational analysis, the actions of care staff have frequently been identified as sources of socially mediated reinforcement capable of developing and maintaining challenging behavior. Accordingly, behavioral interventions have often sought to train care staff as behavioral change agents. As yet, however, there have been few attempts to conduct full functional analyses of the behavior of care staff working with people with mental retardation and challenging behaviors. We argue that although direct contingency-shaping of staff behavior has rightly been emphasized, it is possible that many aspects of staff conduct are under the indirect control of verbal formulations. If staff behavior is rule-governed (Skinner, 1969), a range of different sources of control must be considered in a complete analysis. Using this framework, we interpret existing literature on staff behavior and identify research strategies that will extend our understanding of why staff act as they do.
Research in developmental disabilities, 1994 · doi:10.1016/0891-4222(94)90008-6