The goal of funtional assessment is to identify events associated with problem behavior. Once these variables are identified, support plans can be based on the events associated with behavioral maintenance. However, in some cases no event is identified as causing problem behavior. Such inconclusive results are a concern because without the identification of events maintaining responding, the basis for intervention is unclear. This article proposes a five-level process for assessing the conditions maintaining problem behavior when social reinforcers are not initially identified. The assessment sequence studies those aspects of the response-reinforcer topography that appear most available to social manipulation in order to discover previously unidentified sources of reinforcement. Such an approach may help extend functional assessments to instances of problem behavior that currently defy identification, and increase the percentage of functional assessments that result in successful outcomes.

 

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a functional assessment-based self-management strategy on the problem classroom behavior fo a seventh-grade student identified as having emotional and/or behavioral disorders. On the basis of data obtained from functional assessment interviews and direct obeservations, the student was taught a self-management strategy that consisted of self-recording work completion and appropriate hand raising, self-instruction on "keeping his cool," and self-recruitment of adult attention. An ABAB design was used to evaluate the impact of the self-management package. The results indicated that the self-management package was associated with increases in work completion and percentage of intervals on-task behavior, as well as decreases in percentage of intervals of talk-outs.

This article examines precedents that justify Congress in creating a preference for positive behavioral interventions, strategies, and supports over other interventions in the 1997 Amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The authors concluded that the IDEA 1997 provisions are warranted by several well established precedents based in constitutional law, in the right to treatment and the right to education cases, in moral philosophy, and in democratic-government philosophy.