Incorporating Interview-Informed Functional Analyses into Practice

Abstract

We replicated and extended the effects of an assessment and treatment model employed by Hanley et al. (Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 47, 16-36, 2014) with one participant receiving home-based services. Following a functional analysis, we taught the participant multiple functional communication responses (FCRs) and to tolerate delays and denials to requested items. The participant learned the FCRs and the delay to reinforcers was increased to 34 min. Results generalized across stimuli, people, settings, and time. Social validity results supported that the behaviors were important, the treatment was acceptable, and the effects were significant. The value of assessment procedures can be determined by the ability to use the results to design effective treatments. Hanley et al. (2014) describe an assessment model that incorporates a functional analysis (FA) that differs from the FA described by Iwata et al. (1994). In Hanley et al.'s FA, rather than testing all generic classes of reinforcement, and doing so separately, the authors identified several putative reinforcers for problem behavior via an open-ended interview and synthesized the rein-forcers in a single test condition. For example, if the interview identified a child escaped work and accessed a toy following problem behavior, escape and a toy were delivered contingent on problem behavior in the test condition. Using open-ended assessments and synthesizing variables in a functional analysis following undifferentiated data has occurred for quite some time (see Jessel et al. 2016 for a brief summary); however, Hanley et al. was first to highlight the use of this technique during an initial FA. Hanley et al. validated their assessment model by designing an effective treatment based on the assessment results. The experimenters first taught participants functional communication responses (FCRs) and then taught participants to tolerate delays to the requested items. During delays, participants were taught to engage in less preferred and contextually appropriate activities or adult-led instruction. Results showed decreases in problem behavior and increases in FCRs and tolerance responses across participants thus supporting the results produced by the assessment. Santiago et al. (2016) replicated and extended the results of Hanley et al. to a school and home setting. The results of Hanley et al. (2014) are encouraging, and although there have been several replications of the assessment (e.g., Jessel et al. 2016) or initial treatment (Slaton et al. 2017) process, currently, there are no replications of the entire assessment and treatment process other than Santiago et al. (2016) and Jessel, Ingvarrson, Metras, Kirk, & Whipple (2018), which include authors from the same research lab. Replications from various researchers and • This study replicated and extended Hanley et al. (2014) by demonstrating the use of an open-ended interview to inform the design of a functional analysis, which quickly identified the function of one participant's problem behavior in a home setting. • Our open-ended interview suggested one function as opposed to a synthesized function, and the treatment effects demonstrated generality of the delay and denial tolerance protocol, further suggesting its utility for practitioners in applied settings. • We demonstrated the efficacy of this procedure across settings by dedicating only 1 to 2 h per week to the described treatment and its durability across time, which offers implications for those selecting potential treatment options for FCT with limited service hours. • We implemented FCT across a variety of responses, rather than the omnibus mand "My way" reported by Hanley et al. (2014), which may support the application of these procedures with learners with more advanced verbal repertoires.