The re-emergence of functional analysis in behavioral treatment: Procedures vs outcomes

Abstract

Functional analysis of behavior was earmarked as a central feature of evaluation and diagnostic strategies in behavior therapy and Applied Behavior Analysis since their beginnings in the 1960's. The early success, unprecedented in the history of psychology, of the applications of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior to social problems, brings about an almost blind adherence to a topographical analysis of behavior and as a result behavioral diagnosis which categorizes problem behavior in terms of deficits and excesses. Concerned with the development of a technology of behavior, applied behavior analysis and their professional counterparts - behavior modifiers and behavior therapists - base the development and dissemination of application programs and packages almost exclusively on only one part of the three-term contingency, stimulus consequences. As a result of the growing evidence on the real magnitude of behavioral analytic applications to solving social problems, fleeing and brief outcomes, lack of generalization, subject to maturational processes and restricted to certain specific populations, it has become evident that analytical dimension, one of the seven dimensions that were proposed a fundamental characteristic of applied behavior analysis by Baer, Wolf and Risley in 1968, needs to be reviewed.

The following article reviews the evolution of Applied Behavior Analysis at an international level during the last two decades, as well its contribution to the field of measurement and treatment of behavioral disorders and it's limitations in achieving maintenance and generalization of results. In the search for solutions to the obstacles in development the long awaited technology of behavior, recent work utilizing behavioral diagnoses based on a functional analysis of behavior, and the concepts, related to pivotal behaviors, functional equivalence and conditional stimulus control are discussed.

On the basis of this review, a series of ideas are proposed to strengthen the success of applications of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior to problems of social importance and to advance the early development of new fields of professional psychology, an applied field of the science of behavior.