Functional Analysis

For more than 15 years, functional assessment has been increasingly used by practitioners and researchers to link specific environmental events identified as affecting challenging behavior to the selection of effective intervention strategies. The expanding literature base, along with recent revisions to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 1997) mandating the use of functional behavioral assessment in specific situations, has led to increased interest in this process. Despite the recent fervor exhibited in the research literature and related personnel preparation activities, one step of the process is frequently omitted in the application of functional behavioral assessment within natural settings—the use of analogues to empirically verify assessment results. Due to the level of control necessary for employing analogues, they have predominantly been used in clinical settings and have only more recently been within natural settings. This article presents an overview of the present knowledge base and possible applications of experimental analyses in classrooms for students with autism and related disabilities.