04. Assessments Flashcards
Punisher Assessments
Measuring negative verbalizations, avoidance movements, escape attempts (use this data to develop hypotheses on the effectiveness of each stimulus change as a punisher).
4 Phases of Intervention (A PIE)
Assessment
Planning
Implementation
Evaluation
Assessment
A systematic method for obtaining information about the function challenging behaviors serve for an individual (allows to make empirically based hypotheses for why behaviors occur)
Purpose of Assessments
Guides us to create effective and positive interventions
Ethics Warning: Assessments (4)
- You have to choose the right behaviors for assessment, so you need to know what is socially significant and to be able to prioritize.
- Be skilled at conducting Assessments
- Accept clients only those whose behaviors or requested services are commensurate with your education, training, and experience
- GET WRITTEN CONSENT
5 Phases of Assessment
- Screening and general depositon
- Defining and quantifying problems or desired achievement criteria
- Pinpointing target behaviors to treat
- Monitoring progress
- Follow-up
Indirect Measures
Data obtained from recollections, reconstructions, or subjective ratings of events (interviews, checklists, not as reliable)
Direct Measures
Provide information about a person’s behavior as it occurs (direct observation, tests, preferred choice)
4 Ways to Acquire Information for Assessment (COIT)
Checklists
Observations
Interviews
Tests
Checklists
Asks about antecedents and consequences of the target behavior (Child Behavior Checklist, Adaptive Behavior Scale)
Observation
Should be direct observation in the client’s natural environment (20-30 min repeated) while the observer takes anecdotal data (ABC recording of the behaviors that occur.
Interviews
First step in identifying list of behaviors which can be used later in direct observation (can interview both the individual and significant others)
Tests (Standardized Tests)
Consistent administration is key, most standardized tests do not work well with functional behavior assessments because results are not translates directly into target behaviors.
Reviewing Data
Review all records and available data (Indirect FBA)
Ethics Warning: Assessment Considerations
- Rule out Medical concerns for problem behaviors (Recommend client seek medical consultation)
Ethics Warning: Language
When speaking with others, try to use user-friendly language.
Preliminary Assessments
An indirect assessment to start your identification and hypothesis process (info is gathered via interviews, rating scales, screening forms, etc.)
Ethics Warning: Collaboration
It is your role to initiate and maintain the collaboration so that they will consistently and correctly implement the plan
Ethics Warning: Selecting Intervention (3)
- Get to know the physical, material, and human resources in the family or organization
- Learn about the value and concerns of each key stakeholder.
- Be aware of environmental and resource constraints
Ethics Warning: Environmental Changes
Sometimes simply changing the environment is enough (instead of a complex treatment plan)
Ecological Assessment
Includes information about physiological conditions, physical settings. interactions with others, home, etc. (costly)
Reactivity
The effects of the assessment process on the behavior being assessed
Reducing Reactivity
- Be as unobtrusive as possible
- Repeat observation until reactive effects subside
- Take effects into account when interpreting your data
Ethics Warning: Socially Significant Behaviors
It is not okay to change a behavior for the benefit of others of because you want to (only improve life of the client)
Habilitation
Occurs when a person’s repertoire has been changed such that short and long-term reinforcers are maxed and punishers are minimized
10 Questions about Habilitation
- Is this behavior likely to produce reinforcement in the natural environment?
- Is it a prerequisite for a more complex functional skill?
- Will this behavior increase access to environments?
- Will changing this behavior predispose others to interact with him more supportively?
- Is this behavior a pivotal behavior or a behavior cusp?
- Is this an age-appropriate behavior?
- Is there a replacement behavior available for the reduced behavior?
- Does the behavior represent the actual goal or indirectly related?
- Is this a real behavior of interest?
- Will this behavior help achieve the goal? (losing weight)
Normalization
The believe that people with disabilities should be physically and socially integrated into mainstream society regardless of the degree or type of disability to the max extent
Behavior Cusps
Behaviors that open a person’s world to new contingencies (not the same as pre-requisites)
Pivotal Behaviors
A behavior that, once learned, produces corresponding modifications or covariations in other adaptive untrained behaviors.
Generative Learning
Enhancing comprehension of new material due to previous learning
Prioritizing Target Behaviors
- Threat to health or safety of client or others
- Frequency, Opportunities to use new behaviors versus occurrences of problem behaviors
- Chronic problem should come first before new problem
- Potential for higher rates of reinforcement
- Relative importance to future skill development and independence
- Reduction of negative attention from others
- Reinforcement from significant others
8: Likelihood of success
9 Cost-Benefit Ratio to change behavior
4 Functions of Behavior (SEAT)
Sensory
Escape
Attention
Tangible
Default Technologies
Coercive punishment-based interventions often selected arbitrarily
Functional Analysis
Only FBA method that allows you to confirm hypothesis regarding functional relations between behaviors and environment events (gold standard)
Analogs
The arrangement of variables (not setting), allows for better control of variables
2 Types of Functional Analyses
- Extended Functional Analysis
2. Brief Functional Analysis
Extended Functional Analysis
3 test conditions (contingent attention, contingent escape, and alone) and 1 control condition (play), a fifth condition has since been added for tangibles
Brief Functional Analysis
A brief version of the extended functional analysis, each condition is presented except for the alone condition.
Interpreting FA: Attention Function
Client is given attention –> the attention is then removed to establish the MO. –> Behavior occurs –> Attention is given
Interpreting FA: Escape Function
Client is given non-preferred demands repeatedly –> Behavior occurs –> demands are removed
Interpreting FA: Automatic Function
The client remains in a room without demands or social interaction –> the behavior occurs in the absence of demands or social interaction
Interpreting FA: Undifferentiated Pattern
Probem behavior is occurring across all conditions or is variable across conditions: FA is inconclusive or behavior is automatically reinforced
Play Condition
Tests for automatic reinforcement and serves as a control condition, Leisure materials are freely available while attention is given about every 30 seconds.
Tangible Condition
Client is given access –> tell client to give you items or remove items –> Behavior occurs –> Give items back to client
FA Advantages (3)
- Clearly demonstrates the variables that relate the problem behavior
- Standard to which all other forms of FBA are evaluated.
- Enables development of effective reinforcement -based treatment program.
FA Disadvantages (6)
- May temporarily strengthen the problem behavior
- May result in the behavior acquiring new functions
- Acceptability is low
- Difficult to use for serious, low frequency behaviors
- Requires time, effort, and professional expertise
- If conducted in contrived settings may not identify idiosyncratic variable related to problem behavior.
Direct Descriptive FBA
Direct Observation of problem behavior under natural condition (involved baseline data)
3 Data Collection Methods for Descriptive FBA (AAS)
ABC Narrative Recording
ABC Continuous Recording
Scatter Plot
ABC Narrative Recording
Data are collected only when behaviors of interest are observed, recording is open-ended
Advantage of ABC Narrative Recording
Less time-consuming than continuous recording
Disadvantages of ABC Narrative Recording
- Identifying function of behavior not established
- May yield false positives because data are collected only when behavior occur
- Some antecedent and consequence events may be present when behavior is absent
- Reliability is low, inferred statements
ABC Continuous Recording
Recording occurrences of target behaviors and selected environmental events within the natural routine during a specified period of time. (Min. 20-30 min)
Advantages of ABC Continuous Recording (3)
- Uses precise Measures
- Provides contextual information and correlations of problem behavior
- Calculates conditional probabilities
Disadvantages of ABC Continuous Recording
Often, antecedents and consequences do not reliably precede or follow a problem behavior, making correlations difficult to detect.
Scatter Plot
Procedure for recording the extend to which a target behavior occurs more often at particular times than others (for analyzing behavior patterns)
Advantages of Scatter Plot (2)
- Identifies time when the behavior occurs
2. Can be useful for pinpointing periods of the day to focus on.
Disadvantages of Scatter Plot (3)
- Subjective
- Does not determine the function of the behavior
- Does not offer replacement behaviors
Indirect FBA
Still identifies potential events in the natural setting that correlates with problem behavior by gathering information from others who know the individual well.
(Ex: Motivation Assessment Scale, Motivation Analysis Rating Scale, Problem Behavior Questionnaire, etc.
Ethics Warning: Interventions
Your intervention must match the function of the behavior (functional equivalence)
Discrepancy Analysis
Tells you if the problem behavior is at problematic levels, helps you determine the behavior standard for acceptability
Ethics Warning: Ongoing Assessment
You should continue to monitor how effective your intervention are over time, function of behavior change over time, ongoing evaluations and assessments is a basic client right.
3 Characteristic of Operational Definitions (OCC)
Objective (OBSERVABLE)
Clear
Complete
Ethics Warning: Social Validity
Ensure your assessment and intervention has social validity (is the client’s life changing in a positive way?)
Social Validity
Social significance in goals, appropriateness of the procedures, and importance of the effects
Selecting Interventions (Social Validity)
Determine if the mediators and others in the clients life agree with the procedures, if they don’t, they will not adhere to them in the future.
2 Procedures for Identifying Reinforcers
Stimulus Preference Assessment
Reinforcer Assessment
Stimulus Preference Assessment
Identifies stimuli that are likely to function as reinforcers. Determines what a person prefers, the relative preference value, and the conditions under which those preference values change.
3 Basic Methods of Stimulus Preference Assessment
Asking about stimulus preference (the person or significant others)
Observation
Trial-Based Method
Free-Operant Observation
Recording what activities a person engages in when they can choose during a period of unrestricted access to numerous activities
Contrived Free-Operant Observation
The practitioner fills the environment with a variety of items that the person may like
Naturalistic Free-Operant Observation
Conducted in Learners everyday environment as unobtrusively as possible
Trial- Based Methods
Stimuli are presented to the learner in a series of trials and the learner’s responses to the stimuli are measure as index preference (approach, contact, engagement are measured.)
3 Types of Trial-Based Methods of Stimulus Preference Assessments (PMS)
Paired Stimulus (Forced Choice) Multiple Stimulus Single Stimulus (Successive Choice)
Paired Stimulus
Simultaneous presentation of 2 stimuli where the observer records how frequently items are chosen.
Multiple Stimulus
Simultaneous presentation of an array of 3 or more stimuli
Multiple Stimuli with replacement
The item chosen remains in the array and the items not chosen are replaced with new items
Multiple Stimuli without replacement
The chosen item is removed from the array, the order of placement is rearranged and the next trial begins.
Single Stimulus
Presented one item at a time in random order and the person’s reaction to each stimulus is records
Guidelined for Selecting Stimulus Preferences
- Monitor the learner’s activities during the time period before the assessment
- Use the methods that balance the cost-benefit of brief assessments with more prolonged assessments
- When time is brief, conduct brief stimulus assessments with fewer items
- Combine data from multiple assessment methods
Reinforcer Assessment
A variety of direct, data-based methods used to present one or more stimuli contingent on a target response and then measuring future effects on the rate of responding (used to determine effects of reinforcers on behavior)
Concurrent Schedule Reinforcer Assessment
Two or more contingencies operate independently and simultaneously for 2 or more behaviors (pits 2 stimuli against each other)
Multiple Schedule Reinforcer Assessment
Presenting 2 or more component schedules of reinforcement for a single response with only one component schedule in effect at the given time
Progressive Ratio Schedule Reinforcer Assessment
Assesses the relative effectiveness of a stimulus as reinforcement as response requirements increase
Punisher Assessments
The sooner an effective punishment can be identified, the sooner it can be part of an effective treatment program. (want to use the smallest intensity of punishers possible.
Making Recommendations
Established: Should teach him new behavior for skill
Maintained: Work on maintaining behavior
Increase/decrease the behavior as needed.
