Use of Brief Functional Analysis and Intervention Evaluation in Public Settings

Abstract

Educational experience in the community provides students with moderate and severe intellectual disabilities the opportunity to learn and rehearse skills they need to participate fully in community environments. The degree to which students with intellectual disabilities participate in their communities is often dependent on their ability to demonstrate appropriate behaviors when in public settings. For students with intellectual disabilities who exhibit socially inappropriate behavior, access to community programs may be limited or even denied. The purpose of this study was to investigate the identification and selection of interventions for inappropriate social behaviors maintained by negative reinforcement in public community settings. Four high school-age students with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities participated in a brief functional analysis to identify maintaining contingencies of target behaviors. Based on the resulting hypotheses, antecedent-based and response-based interventions were designed and compared. Results indicated that the antecedent-based intervention of self-operated auditory prompts worked as effectively as or better than the response-based intervention. In addition, teachers' social validity of intervention in public settings assessed the acceptability of both interventions. Teachers indicated that auditory prompts were socially acceptable for vocational training in public community settings.