Question: In this original condition of an FA, attention is initially withheld.
Answer: Social disapproval.
What is often overlooked when we study functional analysis, especially if we don’t have the experience of conducting an actual functional analysis, is the “how” component. Let’s talk specifically about the social disapproval condition, which is the original name for what can be called the attention condition, meaning the condition that tests for the attention function of a behavior.
In this condition, social attention is deliberately diverted from the client. If and when that client engages in the targeted behavior, attention is given contingent on the targeted behavior. Something that gets forgotten or overlooked is that the form of attention is called social disapproval because most often, problem behaviors are attended to with corrective or negative feedback.
The takeaway is that attention comes in all forms. If any sort of feedback, positive or negative, that follows the behavior in an FA results in that behavior’s increase, then we know that that behavior’s function should be noted as attention.
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Trial-based FA A variation of the functional analysis that uses a trial-based format to evaluate the occurrence and nonoccurrence of challenging behaviors given the presentation of an opportunity (trial) to emit the…
Synthesized FA A variation of the functional analysis that uses an Interview Informed Synthesized Contingency Analysis (IISCA) to hypothesize the contingencies that may maintain challenging behavior and then testing those hypothesized contingencies.
Precursor FA A variation of the functional analysis that analyzes the precursors to challenging behavior (i.e., responses that reliably occur close in time before the challenging behavior). Each trial is terminated as…
Natural settings FA A variation of the functional analysis conducted in natural settings to explore the relevant stimuli present in natural settings that can impact challenging behavior.
Latency-based FA A variation of the functional analysis that measures the time between the presence of an EO to the onset of the challenging behavior. Each trial is terminated as soon as…
Functional analysis (FA) A functional assessment activity during which the antecedents and consequences in the client’s natural environment are arranged and systematically manipulated so that their individual effects on challenging behavior can be…
Brief FA A variation of the functional analysis conducted over a shorter period of time by decreasing the duration of each analyzed condition.
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