Rp. Hastings et B. Remington, RULES OF ENGAGEMENT - TOWARD AN ANALYSIS OF STAFF RESPONSES TO CHALLENGING BEHAVIOR, Research in developmental disabilities, 15(4), 1994, pp. 279-298
Through observational analysis, the actions of care staff have frequen
tly been identified as sources of socially mediated reinforcement capa
ble of developing and maintaining challenging behavior. Accordingly, b
ehavioral interventions have often sought to train care staff as behav
ioral change agents. As yet, however, there have been few attempts to
conduct full functional analyses of the behavior of care staff working
with people with mental retardation and challenging behaviors. We arg
ue that although direct contingency-shaping of staff behavior has righ
tly been emphasized, it is possible that many aspects of staff conduct
are under the indirect control of verbal formulations. If staff behav
ior is rule-governed (Skinner 1969), a range of different sources of c
ontrol must be considered in a complete analysis. Using this framework
, we interpret existing literature on staff behavior and identify rese
arch strategies that will extend our understanding of why staff act as
they do.