Functional Assessment

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Functional assessment is used by researchers to gather data that will help them understand a person’s behavior and the behavior’s causes and effects. The environmental events that take place before the problem behavior are called antecedents, and the events that take place after are called consequences. Both are observed to see if they have any effect on the behavior, that is, if they are associated with and maintain its occurrence. There are many ways in which researchers can prove if certain events cause the behavior, one of them being functional analysis methods. This functional assessment method consists of manipulation of the aforementioned environmental events, hoping to prove if a relationship between the events and the behavior exists …show more content…

Useful information can be gathered through various methods, some of them including interviews and direct observation (both natural and analogue observations). This information can help guide the researcher and the treatment plans for the individual. This technique hopes to teach and employ new positive behaviors, and diminish and eventually terminate negative outcomes. Researchers have greatly praised the use of functional analysis as it has been proven to be more effective and ethical than the other option, punishment. Punishment has been criticized for its negative execution and possible serious side effects, such as aggression and negative emotional responses. There are several steps that must be followed in order to perform a functional analysis and identify the functions of a problem behavior. First, the individual must be observed so that the problem behavior can be monitored and recorded. This leads to various research questions that must be analyzed and answered in order to provide the best treatment for the participant

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