Assessment Flashcards
Four phases of Intervention
- Assessment
- Planning
- Implementation
- Evaluation
Purpose of an Assessment
- To identify and define targets for behavior change
2. Guides us to create effective and positive interventions.
Five Phases of Assessment
- Screening and General Deposition
- Defining and Quantifying Problems or Desired Achievement Criteria
- Pinpointing Target Behaviors to be Treated
- Monitoring Progress
- Following-up
A systematic method for obtaining information about the FUNCTION challenging behaviors serve for an individual.
Involves a variety of methods including direct observations, interviews, checklists, and tests to identify targets for behavior change.
Assessment (Functional Behavior Assessment)
Before you conduct an assessment, you must:
Ask this critical question: Who has the Authority, Permission, Resources, and Skills to complete an assessment and intervene with the behavior ?
And obtain the client’s or client-surrogate’s approval in writing of the behavior assessment procedures before implementing them.
Data obtained from recollections, reconstructions, or subjective ratings of events.
- Interviews
- Checklists
Indirect Measures
Allows us to make empirically-based hypotheses for WHY behaviors occurs.
Discovers resources, assets, significant others, competing contingencies, maintenance and generalization factors, and potential reinforcers and/or punishers that may be included in intervention plans.
Assessment (FBA)
Provide information about a person’s behavior as it occurs.
PREFERRED CHOICE over indirect measures.
- Tests
- Direct Observations
Direct Measures
Starts the hypotheses development process.
Should only be used as a supplement to other FBA methods.
Indirect Measures
Four ways to acquire information for assessment:
- Checklists (Behavior Checklist)
- Observation (Direct Observation)
- Interviews (Structured Behavioral Interviews)
- Tests (Standardized Tests)
Review all records and available data (data collected from a previous agency, from the school, etc.).
This is part of your INDIRECT FBA.
Review records and data at the outset of the case
Likert scales.
Alone or with interview and rating scales.
Asks about antecedents and consequences of the target behavior.
Checklists
Direct and repeated in the natural environment
Identifies potential target behaviors
Preferred method
Observation (Direct Observation)
Basic form of direct observation
Temporally sequenced description of behavior patterns
Requires total attention of observer for about 20-30 minutes
Carried out for several days to decrease reactivity effects
ANECDOTAL OBSERVATION (ABC Recording)
Consistent Administration is key!
Most _________ ________ do NOT work well with functional behavior assessments because results are not translated directly into target behaviors.
Test/Standardized Tests
First step in identifying list of behaviors, which can be used later in direct observation.
Interviews/Structured Behavioral Interviews
RULE OUT MEDICAL CAUSES FOR PROBLEM BEHAVIOR.
Refer client to undergo medical evaluation.
If biological/medical variables are affecting the behavior, then there may be NO need for behavior analytic services.
If NO biological/medical variables are affecting the behavior, then there may be a need for behavior analytic services.
You should recommend seeking a medical consultation if there is any reasonable possibility that a referred behavior is a result of a medication side effect or some biological cause.
Consider Biological/Medical Variables that may be Affecting the Client
Review all records and available data (data collected from a previous agency, from school, etc.)
Part of the indirect assessment
Review Records and Data at the Outset of the Case
Conduct an indirect assessment to start your identification and hypothesis process.
Ask yourself these questions, to see if there is a need for intervention:
1) Does the individual’s behavior pose a danger to self or others?
2) Does the behavior affect the client’s well-being?
3) Does the behavior prevent the client from accessing less restrictive environments in various settings?
- Is the client separated from same-aged peers?
- Is the client in jeopardy of losing placement?
4) How does the behavior compare to same-aged, typically developing peers?
Conduct A Preliminary Assessment of the Client in Order to Identify the Referral Problem
When speaking with others, you want to be careful about using very complicated, technical behavior-analytic language. (but be careful: DON’T USE MENTALISTIC LANGUAGE EITHER).
Using language that is fully understandable to the recipient of the service.
Explain Behavioral Concepts using Non-Technical Language
When conducting assessments and talking to various people about the client, you should speak in behavioral language.
Do NOT discuss the problems in mentalistic terms (e.g., He is aggressive because he has Autism)
Speaking in mentalistic terms does not offer a solution.
Describe and Explain Behavior, Including Private Events, In Behavior-Analytic (NON-Mentalistic Terms)
Collaborate with the client’s mediators (the people who will be implementing the plan and who support the client).
It is your role as the behavior analyst to initiate and maintain the “Collabo” so that they will consistently and correctly implement your plan.
Cooperating with other professionals in order to serve your clients effectively and appropriately.
Provide Behavior-Analytic Services in Collaboration with Others who Support and/or Provide Services to One’s Client
Get to know the physical, material, and human resources in the family or organization within which change is to occur.
Learn about the values and concerns of the key stakeholders.
Look to see what adjustments might be required within the system to encourage, monitor, and sustain the kinds of changes being sought.
If the resources are not available for us, then we must return to the drawing board to adjust our goals and/or methods.
Select Intervention Strategies Based on Environmental and Resource Constraints
The effects of the assessment process on the behavior of the individual being assessed.
Most likely when observation methods are OBTRUSIVE (obvious to the individual)
Effects are usually temporary
Reactivity
Most obtrusive data collection method:
Self-Monitoring
Sometimes you do not have to create a complicated treatment package for the client’s inappropriate behavior. Sometimes simply changing the environment is enough.
By changing the ecology and/or how others engages with your client, your client’s behavior can be changed.
When conducting an indirect FBA, you should identify:
- Environmental variables that may trigger the behavior and that occur after a behavior that may be reinforcing the behavior.
If the environmental conditions hamper implementation of the behavior analytic program, you seek to eliminate the environmental constraints, or identify in writing the obstacles to doing so.
Identify and make Environmental Changes that Reduce the need for Behavior Analysis Services
A great deal of information is gathered about the individual and the various settings in which that individual lives and works.
Includes information about physiological conditions, physical settings, interactions, with others, home environment, etc.
Creates a lot of DESCRIPTIVE data
Costly in terms of time, money, etc.
One should know when it is appropriate to use
Ecological Assessment
AKA: Ecology
Not just the physical setting in which the client lives and/or works, but the people inside there as well.
Environment
To reduce reactivity, you should:
- ) Be as unobtrusive as possible
- ) Repeat observations until reactive effects subside.
- ) Take reactivity effects into account when interpreting your data.
Consider whose behavior is being assessed and why.
Not OK to change behavior for benefit of others or because you want to
Always ask yourself, “To what extent will the proposed change improve the person’s life?”
Assessing Social Significance of Potential Target Behaviors
AKA: Adjustment
Assessing meaningfulness of change
Is this change really useful to the client?
Occurs when a person’s repertoire has been changed such that short- and long-term reinforcers are maximized and short- and long-term punishers are minimized.
Habilitation
10 Questions to Ask Yourself when Evaluating the Habilitation/Social Significance of Target Behaviors
- ) Is the behavior likely to produce reinforcement in the client’s natural environment after intervention ends? (AKA: Relevance of Behavior Rule)
- ) Is this behavior a prerequisite for a more complex functional skill?
- ) Will this behavior increase the client’s access to environments?
- ) Will changing this behavior predispose others to interact with the client in a more supportive manner?
- ) Is this behavior a pivotal behavior or a behavioral cusp?
- ) Is this an age-appropriate behavior?
- ) If this behavior is to be reduced/eliminated from the client’s repertoire, has an adaptive and functional behavior been selected to replace it?
- ) Does this behavior represent the actual goal, or is it only indirectly related?
- ) Is this “just talk”, or is it the real behavior of interest?
- ) If the goal itself is not a specific behavior, will this behavior help achieve it?
The belief that people with disabilities should, to the maximum extent possible, be physically and socially integrated into mainstream society regardless of the degree or type of disability.
The use of progressively more typical settings and procedures to establish personal behavior which are as culturally normal as possible.
Normalization (Mainstreaming)
Behaviors that open a person’s world to new contingencies.
Ex. Reading, Generalized imitation, and a baby crawling and being able to have contact to toys and parents
Has sudden and dramatic consequences that extend well beyond the idiosyncratic change itself
Behavior Cusps
A behavior that, once learned, produces corresponding modifications or covariations in other adaptive untrained behaviors.
Once you learn them, it will lead to more complex behaviors.
Ex. Self- management, Choice-making
Pivotal Behaviors
Exposes the individuals repertoire to new environments, especially new reinforcers, and punishers, new contingencies, new responses, new stimulus controls, and new communities of maintaining or destructive contingencies.
Behavior Cusps
Prerequisite AKA:
Component
Strategy used to teach Pivotal Behaviors
Pivotal Response Training (PRT)
When you are creating goals for intervention, you should select?
Behavior Cusps and Pivotal Behaviors
AKA: Derived Relations
Enhancing comprehension of new material due to previous learning.
Achieved through teaching material to ensure the client is FLUENT with the material and through teaching the client behavior cusps and pivotal behaviors
Generative Learning
Prioritizing Target Behaviors: 9 Questions to Consider
- Threat to the health or safety of clients or others.
- Frequency: # of opportunities to use new behavior. Are there a lot of opportunities so that the behavior is maintained in the natural environment? - Occurrence of problem behavior
- Longevity of problem: Chronic problem should come before new one.
- Potential for higher rates of reinforcement.
- Relative importance of this target behavior to future skill development and independent functioning.
- Reduction of negative attention from others.
- Reinforcement for significant others: Exercise caution when considering this.
- Likelihood of success: Some behaviors are harder to change than others.
- Cost-benefit ratio to change client’s behavior: Costs include time and effort. Cost should be LOW and benefit should be HIGH.
4 Functions of Problem Behavior
HINT: SEAT
Sensory
Escape
Attention
Tangible
Coercive, punishment-based interventions often selected arbitrarily.
Conducting FBAs decreases reliance on:
Default Technologies
The only FBA method that allows us to confirm hypotheses regarding functional relations between behaviors and environmental events.
AKA: FA; Experimental Analysis: Analog Assessment
The “GOLD” standard of assessment procedures
Functional Analysis