Functional analysis and treatment of adult problem behavior: A review

Functional analysis (FA) methodology has been deemed the best practice in the field of applied behavior analysis. The data collected in an FA allows behavior analysts to develop the most effective and ethical behavior interventions. With the diagnosis for individuals with autism on the rise along with the forecast of adults who will need support, it may be time to take stock of the available literature. The purpose of this review was to evaluate the behavior analytic research over the last 25 years (1997–2022) on FA and treatment for adults who engage in severe problem behavior. Utilizing specific inclusion and exclusion criteria resulted in the identification of 28 articles. These articles were examined across participant characteristics, target behavior, FA type, FA settings, interventions, generalization, and maintenance. Implications on adult FA and treatment are discussed along with recommendations for practitioners who desire to support this population.     

Claw-in-the-door: pigeons,like humans,display the foot-in-the-door effect

Animal Cognition - People are more likely to comply with a large request when it is preceded by another, smaller request, and this is known as the “foot-in-the-door” (FITD). The FITD...     

Visual processing and infant ocular Latencies in the overlap paradigm

Young infants have repeatedly been shown to be slower than older infants to shift fixation from a midline stimulus to a peripheral stimulus. This is generally thought to reflect maturation of the neural substrates that mediate the disengagement of attention, but this developmental difference may also be attributable to young infants' slower processing of the midline stimulus. This possibility was tested with 3- and 7-month-old infants in 2 experiments in which the degree of familiarity of the midline stimulus was manipulated across repeated trials. The results of these experiments demonstrated that the processing of midline content does affect infants' ocular latencies to a peripheral stimulus but that developmental differences in such processing do not account for developmental differences in disengagement seen across the 1st year.     

Towards a neo-configurational theory of intrinsic motivation

Motivation and Emotion - This research seeks to improve our understanding of how intrinsic motivation is instantiated. Three motivation theories, flow theory, self-determination theory, and...     

Disease-avoidant behaviour and its consequences

Medical conditions that are non-contagious, but that appear contagious, seem to result in the sufferer being avoided. Error management theory (EMT), suggests that such false alarms occur because the cost of infection poses a greater threat to ones fitness than avoidance. Study 1 attempted to demonstrate a disease-related false alarm effect by asking participants, to evaluate a series of vignettes, featuring people with infectious diseases, non-infectious diseases that looked infectious and non-infectious diseases that did not. Judgements of contracting infection under varying levels of contact, and desire to avoid were obtained. Consistent with EMT, a false alarm effect was evident. Study 2 examined the importance of the face as a key indicator of real and apparent infection, by determining whether facial symptoms result in a greater desire to avoid people with infectious and non-infectious diseases. Consistent with expectation, participants reported a greater desire to avoid people with facially displayed symptoms. Together, these results support the idea that humans have evolved a general tendency to avoid individuals with disease signs, especially if displayed upon the face. One consequence is that where a facially displayed disease sign persists, even if known to be benign, its bearer will experience chronic avoidance.     

Spectral Complexity and Infant Attention

In two experiments, infants selectively attended to auditory stimuli that presented an increasingly complex spectral structure. Using 2- and 4-month-olds as subjects, the first study demonstrated this selectivity in comparison to the rate of acoustic change. The second study demonstrated the increased attention of 4-month-olds in response to an increasingly complex structure. Results are discussed with respect to the neural activity produced by these stimuli along the auditory pathway, and an analogy to the literature on visual attention is drawn.     

Now,Pay Attention! The Effects of Instruction on Children's Attention

We investigated the effects of instructions to “stay on task” on preschoolers' attention and cognitive performance in the face of either incomprehensible or comprehensible distraction. Three- and 4-year-olds completed problem-solving tasks while a distracting event played continuously in the background under conditions of a) no instruction, b) moderate instruction, or c) frequent instruction to “stay on task.” Under conditions where an incomprehensible distractor was present, any amount of instruction reduced looking to the distracting event. Under conditions where a comprehensible distractor was present, however, frequent instruction was the most effective in increasing looking to the task and decreasing looking to the distracting event.