FunctionBx Research Begin:

Welcome to the new FunctionBx Blog!  This will be the stop for updates in the Behavioral Sciences profession.  If you have not yet check out my new app, FunctionBx, I suggest visiting the site, testing out the free software and if you find that you are interested in using the full version, upgrade and get the tool that is already helping professionals and parents understand the Function of the Behavior! 

 The Research 

 

FBA often starts with a familiar pattern:

Antecedent → Behavior → Consequence

It is a useful framework, but new research is reinforcing an important point: the events that occur before a behavior and the events that occur after it may provide different kinds of information.

A recent study in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis examined a component functional analysis designed to separate two questions:

What conditions appear to evoke the behavior?

and

What consequences may actually reinforce or maintain it?

That distinction sounds subtle, but it matters.

An antecedent may tell us when a behavior is more likely to occur. A difficult task, a change in routine, loss of access to something preferred, or the arrival of a particular person might precede the behavior consistently.

But that does not automatically tell us why the behavior continues over time.

To better understand function, we also need to examine what happens afterward. Does the person escape the task? Receive attention? Regain access to something? Does the behavior continue even when no obvious social consequence is present?

The new research tested a method that introduced relevant conditions and consequences separately and then compared the resulting functional predictions with a more conventional functional analysis.

The findings were promising. The component procedure successfully predicted functions later identified in several participants and provided useful additional information in a case where the conventional analysis was unclear.

This is still early research. The study was small, and it does not replace established functional-analysis methods.

But it reinforces a valuable principle for parents, educators, trainees, and behavior-support professionals:

Do not assume that the thing happening immediately before a behavior is its function.

Likewise, do not assume that one consequence observed afterward proves what is maintaining the behavior.

Functional assessment works best when observations are repeated, patterns are compared across situations, and conclusions remain open to revision as better evidence becomes available.

That principle is central to FunctionBx™.

FunctionBx.com is being designed to help users move beyond simply recording what happened and toward asking better questions about what those observations actually mean.

The goal is not to force every behavior into a quick category.

The goal is to improve the quality of observation, strengthen the evidence, and build a more defensible functional hypothesis over time.

Better observation leads to better questions. Better questions lead to better behavioral support.