Citation

Hood SA, Rodriguez NM, Luczynski KC, Fisher WW. J. Appl. Behav. Anal. 2019; 52(3): 642-651.

Affiliation

University of Nebraska Medical Center's Munroe Meyer Institute.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Wiley-Blackwell)

DOI

10.1002/jaba.555

PMID

30924135

Abstract

Under naturally occurring conditions, the individual who is the target of aggression is likely to physically react to evade the aggressor and avoid physical harm. Like other forms of attention that occur following problem behavior, physical reactions may maintain problem behavior. However, evaluating the effects of physical reactions is complicated by issues related to therapists' ability to consistently and safely control their reactions, which may prove difficult to achieve in functional analyses. We evaluated the utility of a concurrent-operant analysis to test behavioral sensitivity to physical reactions. The results suggest that the concurrent-operant analysis may be useful when therapists cannot consistently refrain from responding contingent on problem behavior in the control condition of a more typical functional analysis.

© 2019 Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.

Language: en

Keywords

aggression; attention-maintained; concurrent-operant schedules; functional analysis; protective equipment