Long-term effectiveness and generality of practical functional assessment and skill-based treatment.

There are several considerations to address when conducting functional communication training for challenging behavior in a school setting, such as the need for schedule thinning and maintenance across staff and the need to establish a variety of appropriate classroom skills. There are several strategies for conducting schedule thinning following functional communication training and for transferring effects across people or settings. However, there are few examples of these processes in natural settings with relevant caregivers and with long-term maintenance of effects.

Comparing Simultaneous and Sequential Food Presentation to Increase Consumption of Novel Target Foods.

Two methods of food presentation (simultaneous and sequential) were compared in an adapted alternating treatment design to determine effects on consumption of target foods for three children with autism in a school setting. Preferred and nonpreferred target foods were nominated by parents, and consumption of reported preferred and nonpreferred foods was directly tested. Preferred and nonpreferred foods were then paired together and assigned to one of two conditions.

Toward accurate inferences of response class membership.

In their review of synthesis within the functional analysis (FA) literature, Slaton and Hanley (2018) reported that most synthesized contingency analyses have included multiple topographies of problem behavior in the reinforcement contingency class. This leaves the question of whether one, some, or all forms of problem behavior are sensitive to the synthesized reinforcement contingencies in published analyses. To address this ambiguity, all topographies of problem behavior that were reported by caregivers to co-occur with the most concerning problem behavior were analyzed for 10 participants.

Nature and scope of synthesis in functional analysis and treatment of problem behavior.

Functional analysis (FA) of problem behavior typically includes the contingent delivery of a single reinforcer following problem behavior. However, the FA literature also includes examples of analyses that have delivered multiple reinforcers, arranged multiple establishing operations in one or more test conditions, or both. These analyses have been successfully applied under heterogeneous conditions over several decades and with various synthesized establishing operations and reinforcers, but their qualitative details, outcomes, and contributions to the literature have never been described in a comprehensive manner.

Interview-informed functional analyses: A comparison of synthesized and isolated components.

Hanley, Jin, Vanselow, and Hanratty (2014) described a functional analysis (FA) format that relied on a synthesis of multiple contingencies described by caregivers during open-ended interviews. These interview-informed synthesized contingency analyses (IISCA) provided effective baselines from which to develop socially validated treatments, but the synthesis precluded a precise understanding of individual contingencies influencing problem behavior. We conducted IISCAs and standard FAs (Iwata, Dorsey, Slifer, Bauman, & Richman, 1982/1994) for nine children with autism to evaluate the likelihood of differentiation given a number of synthesized versus isolated variables.

Effects of multiple versus chained schedules on stereotypy and item engagement.

We evaluated rates of automatically reinforced stereotypy and item engagement for 2 children with autism under multiple and chained schedules in a multielement design. Each schedule included components during which stereotypy was blocked (S-) or allowed (S+), and we used colored cards as schedule-correlated stimuli. We report rates of stereotypy and item engagement during S- and S+ components, as well as the percentage of component time that elapsed before the first instances of stereotypy and item engagement.