FUNCTIONS OF BEHAVIOR

By: Mary Ann M. Ballon

Understanding a childs behavior is the first and most important step.

To understand a child's behavior, it is recommended that parents observe challenging behavior carefully and think about the meaning of the behavior because every behavior occurs for a reason. In most cases, the child behavior serves as a communication tool, sending everyone a clear message about the child's feelings, physical status, and needs. The message of the child's behavior is called the "function" of the problem behavior.

There are several functions of behaviorboth behavior "good" and "bad" behavior.

In general, these are the functions of behavior:

Getting or obtaining attention from peers, family members or others Getting or obtaining a desirable item or an object, or gaining access to a preferred activity Getting or obtaining desired sensory input, feelings, sensations or physiological stimulation, such as by touching things, moving the body back and forth, tapping one's leg, smelling things, or tasting/mouthing things

Avoiding or escaping unwanted attention from peers, family members or others Avoiding or escaping non-preferred items or objects, or difficult tasks and/or non-preferred activities

Avoiding or escaping unpleasant, or unwanted sensory input, feelings, sensations or physiological stimulation, such as by hitting oneself, scratching oneself, or engaging in other self-injurious behaviors when something hurts, feels bad, is uncomfortable, etc.

A-B-C Chart in Functional Behavioral Assessment (FBA). (FBA). The A-B-C chart can help summarize the sequence of events around the challenging behavior. A, B, and C stand for behavior. the antecedent, behavior, and consequence of the challenging behavior. behavior. ANTECEDENT: AN EVENT THAT HAPPENS IMMEDIATELY BEFORE A CHALLENGING BEHAVIOR. THIS CAN ALSO ACT AS A "FAST TRIGGER" FOR THE CHALLENGING BEHAVIOR BEHAVIOR: CHALLENGING BEHAVIOR CONSEQUENCE: AN EVENT THAT IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWS THE CHALLENGING BEHAVIOR.

One additional factor to consider is what is called a "setting event." A setting event can be an important clue to investigate in order to reduce or eliminate the challenging behavior.

Setting Event: Events or circumstances that affect the likelihood of the challenging behavior occurring at a later point in time.

Common examples of setting events may include :  illness  lack of sleep  stressful experience However, when the setting event seriously affects the challenging behavior, the challenging behavior is not always totally related only to events that happen immediately before or after the challenging behavior.

RESULT: Next time, he is quite likely to engage in the same problem behavior again, because he knows this is a way that he can successfully get out of doing his math homework.

WHY DOES BEHAVIOR OCCUR?

 Behavior occurs for a reason and reinforcement MAINTAINS behavior. Without reinforcement, people would not engage in behavior.  Another thing to consider is that behavior is learned. While a portion of our behavior is genetic and you are born with certain aspects of your behavior, the majority of your behavior is learned.

 Nurture plays a larger reason for WHY you are the way you are, then nature does. The importance of this lesson is that because the majority of behavior is learned, it can be unlearned or changed. As a result, consequences either increase or decrease behavior. This means that only after a consequence is delivered, and we observe (collect data) if it is increasing or decreasing that behavior-can we determine if punishment or reinforcement occurred. The important lesson to take away from this is that what might be aversive to one person, might be reinforcing to another person.

 Reinforcement MAINTAINS and/or INCREASES behavior. Behavior is, for the most part, Behavior can be unlearned or changed. learned.

Only by determining if a consequence is decreasing or increasing behavior, can we accurately determine patterns of behavior. What might be reinforcing to one person, might very well be aversive to another person.

FOUR BASIC FUNCTIONS OF BEHAVIOR

attention based function Tangible based function Escape/avoidance function Automatic function


Thank you!