Jc. Taylor et Rg. Romanczyk, GENERATING HYPOTHESES ABOUT THE FUNCTION OF STUDENT PROBLEM BEHAVIOR BY OBSERVING TEACHER-BEHAVIOR, Journal of applied behavior analysis, 27(2), 1994, pp. 251-265
We examined whether, as predicted by research on child effects, we cou
ld generate hypotheses about the function of student problem behavior
by observing the amount of attention teachers provided to students. In
the first phase of the study, we observed the amount of attention tea
chers distributed among small groups of students who exhibited problem
behavior in individual or small-group instructional settings (problem
behavior presumably maintained by attention or escape). Based on the
amount of attention each student received, we generated hypotheses abo
ut the function of his or her problem behavior. In the second phase of
the study, we determined the accuracy of these predictions by conduct
ing a brief functional assessment with each student. Results confirmed
that, for 14 of the 15 students, we were able to generate accurate hy
potheses about the function of their problem behavior. These results s
uggest the potential efficacy of using the amount of attention teacher
s distribute among groups of students to generate empirically based hy
potheses about the function of student problem behavior maintained by
attention and/or escape. These results also illustrate the efficiency
of this procedure; by observing teacher behavior, we were able to gene
rate hypotheses about the function of problem behavior for several stu
dents at one time.