Functional Behavior Assessment Essay

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According to Gresham, Watkins, and Skinners article, Functional Behavior Assessments: Principles, Procedures, and Future Directions, the FBA was designed to help schools determine the appropriateness of services and placement, identify positive interventions to reduce the undesirable behavior, and develop appropriate behaviors to replace the inappropriate ones. In addition, the FBA can be defined as a collection of methods for gathering information about antecedents, behaviors, and consequences in order to determine the function of behavior. “The function of behaviors refer to a purpose that behavior serves for the individual. Behavioral functions typically fall into five categories: social attention, access to tangibles to preferred activities,…show more content…
Conducting an FBA is typically considered to be a problem-solving process that looks beyond the behavior itself. Sasso and Reimer (1988) article, Assessing the functional Properties of behavior; Implications and Applications for Classroom, further described the FBA process in steps. To begin the process, we must describe and define the target behavior in specific terms; it is imperative to pinpoint the behavior and to define that behavior in concrete terms that are easy to communicate and simple to measure and record. Our next step is to collect information on possible functions of the target behavior. By collecting and analyzing various kinds of information about behavior that significantly disrupts the teaching and learning process, school personnel are better able to select the most appropriate interventions. It is also important to collect information on antecedent and consequent events, and past events that may influence present behavior. This will also assist schools in predicting when, where, with whom, and under what conditions a certain behavior is most and/or least likely to

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