Four experiments with six students with multiple profound disabilities examined the function of behavioral stereotypies and sensory modalities maintaining them. Findings are discussed in terms of the sensory and social reinforcers that maintain stereotypy, assessment procedures used to identify reinforcers, and the interpretation of assessment…

Evaluation of a protocol for assessing leisure choice skills of seven older adults with severe disabilities involved either presentation with pairs of objects or pictures representing choices. Five participants demonstrated skills in making choices using objects and two demonstrated making choices using pictures. (Author/DB)

This article reviews general classes of variables which help to maintain aberrant behavior including attention seeking, sensory and perceptual consequences, and access to materials or activities. Suggestions for a methodology providing a comprehensive functional analysis are offered which include descriptive analysis, hypothesis forming,…

A study attempted to assess preferences between a task arrangement involving mobility and a task arrangement involving sedentariness with three women with severe disabilities and visual impairments or blindness. Results found that participants' preferences about task arrangements could be successfully assessed. (Author/CR)

A study compared a brief and an extended functional analyses of three adults with serious developmental disabilities and aggressive or self-injurious behavior. Both analyses revealed the same controlling variables, but the brief functional analyses took less than 20% the time in analog conditions as the extended analyses. (Author/CR)

Summarizes state-of-the-art approaches for assessing visual stimulus same/different judgments in individuals with severe intellectual disabilities. Methodological investigations indicate that one can obtain reliable same/different judgments with a variety of stimuli in virtually anyone for whom a basal score on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test…

The Stereotypy Analysis, a means of analyzing environmental variables associated with differential rates of stereotypic behavior, was conducted with five adults with developmental disabilities. Results indicate the analysis was able to detect environmental events associated with stereotypic responding for three subjects and was useful in…

This study describes the development of the Active Treatment Client Rights checklist (ATCR), which was designed to facilitate the assessment, monitoring, and implementation of readily observable client active treatment services for adults with developmental disabilities. The ATCR was found to be highly reliable, valid, and useful in enhancing…

To determine the feasibility of using pictorial stimuli in preference assessments, multiple-stimulus preference assessments were conducted with two adults with mental retardation using both tangible stimuli and pictorial cards representing these same stimuli. Stimuli predicted by the tangible assessment were more potent reinforcers than those…

This study evaluated the reliability of the Child Behavior Checklist with 42 children and youth with mild mental retardation. Use of kappa coefficients and intra-class correlations at item and syndrome levels indicated that the Child Behavior Checklist may not always represent a reliable checklist for the assessment of psychopathology in this…

This study evaluated a method for assessing the behavioral function of severe self-injury in four adults with severe/profound mental retardation. Initial assessment included analyzing within-session trends and fluctuations in rates of self-injury by plotting the frequency within each minute of the session. (DB)

The psychometric properties of the Motivation Assessment Scale were examined using 90 ratings of different problem behaviors among 86 individuals with mental retardation. Although reliability and internal consistency were generally poor, the results depended upon topographies of problem behavior and methods of calculation. The construct validity…

A brief negative-reinforcement assessment was conducted with five children (ages 4 to 14) with developmental disabilities with severe destructive behavior. Children were trained to engage in an escape response and were presented with a variety of stimuli. For each child, several stimuli were identified that may serve as effective negative…

Data from the experimental functional analysis of challenging behaviors of 27 individuals with mental retardation were analyzed to assess agreement among three forms of interpretation. Results found that the methods of interpreting function from experimental assessment can give different results and that test-retest reliability of the experimental…

A study investigated the validity of the Questions about Behavioral Function, a checklist designed to assess antecedent behavior, using a sample of 398 persons with mental retardation and self-injurious behavior, aggression, or stereotypies. The checklist was used successfully to derive clear behavioral functions across all three target behaviors.…