Instruction in Functional Assessment, 2014a

Instruction in Functional Assessment Chapter 3
Based on over a half century of research conducted since ABA was initiated, many
empirically-based interventions have been developed and evaluated. Major treatment
components for a well-designed BEHAVIOR INTERVENTION PLAN (BIP), or a written treatment
document to address the individual’s challenging behavior include:
A. Preventative efforts or ANTECEDENT-BASED TREATMENT
B. Actively increasing or teaching functionally equivalent replacement and other
desirable behaviors
C. Reactive procedures or, what to do when the challenging behavior occurs
These treatment components should be tailored to the specific function of the individual’s
challenging behavior (e.g., tangible positive reinforcement, automatic reinforcement,
negative reinforcement, attention positive reinforcement), consider contextual factors (e.g.,
available assistance, history factors, etc.), and ethical considerations. Specific procedures
related to these treatment components will be briefly reviewed below and then more specific
functionally-related treatments will be noted. This review only highlights the main
treatment possibilities that have received a fairly extensive empirical support and is not
exhaustive of the various treatment possibilities available. Also note that to be competent
in delivering treatment, additional knowledge and experience is needed (see the Behavior
Analyst Certification Board® for more at http://www.bacb.com/)
based Treatment
The individual’s situation can be altered in ways that will eventually reduce the challenging
behavior, potentially avoiding the need for reactive strategies. Prevention efforts
can entail reducing the individual’s motivation for engaging in the challenging behavior
and changing antecedent stimuli in the individual’s natural environment.
NONCONTINGENT REINFORCEMENT (NCR) is a procedure to reduce the individual’s motivation
for engaging in the challenging behaviors whereby the reinforcers for that behavior
are provided freely according to a set time (e.g., every 5 min) before the individual engages
in that behavior (Marcus & Vollmer, 1996; Vollmer, Marcus, & Ringdahl, 1995). NCR is
an empirically validated approach for decreasing challenging behavior (Carr, Severtson, &
Lepper, 2009) and may be one of the most frequently used reinforcement-based procedures
(Matson et al., 2011). For example, if a student is acting out in the classroom to gain the
attention of his classmates then, at the beginning of class before he acts out, give him a
classroom job that garners a lot of attention to foster his desirable behavior (e.g., passing out
handouts). This approach may reduce the individual’s motivation to engage in the undesired
behavior and thereby make it less likely to occur. When using NCR, initially the reinforcer
that is controlling the challenging behavior is delivered continuously or more frequently
than the average baseline occurrence of the challenging behavior. Once the challenging
behavior is reduced, then the frequency of presentation of the reinforcer can be gradually
decreased to typically occurring levels (Tucker, Sigafoos, & Bushell, 1998).
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