Conners, J., Iwata, B. A., Kahng, S., Hanley, G. P., Worsdell, A. S., & Thompson, R. H. (2000).
Differential responding in the presence and absence of discriminative stimuli during multielement functional analyses.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis,
33, 299-308.
We evaluated the extent to which discriminative stimuli
(SDs) facilitate differential responding during
multielement functional analyses. Eight individuals, all
diagnosed with mental retardation and referred for assessment and
treatment of self-injurious behavior (SIB) or aggression,
participated. Functional analyses consisted of four or five
assessment conditions alternated in multielement designs. Each
condition was initially correlated with a specific therapist and
a specific room color (SDs), and sessions continued
until higher rates of target behaviors were consistently observed
under a specific test condition. In a subsequent analysis, the
programmed SDs were removed (i.e., all conditions were
now conducted by the same therapist in the same room), and
sessions continued until differential responding was observed or
until twice as many sessions were conducted with the
SDs absent (as opposed to present), whichever came
first. Results indicated that the inclusion of programmed
SDs facilitated discrimination among functional
analysis conditions for half of the participants. These results
suggest that the inclusion of salient cues may increase either
the efficiency of functional analyses or the likelihood of
obtaining clear assessment outcomes.
DESCRIPTORS: _assessment, discriminative stimuli, functional
analysis