Date of Graduation

1999

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MA

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Psychology

Committee Chair

Joseph R. Scotti

Committee Member

Christina Adams

Committee Member

Donald Kincaid

Abstract

Some children exhibit disruptive and self-injurious behavior during mealtime, limiting the positive interaction between care giver and child, and decreasing the probability of a nutritionally adequate intake. Research has demonstrated the utility of functional analysis (i.e., identifying controlling variables of problem behavior) for the development of effective non-aversive interventions for a variety of behavior problems. This study applied the methodology of an analog experimental (functional) analysis of behavior to the specific interaction between care givers and children exhibiting mealtime behavior problems. Five conditions that resemble feeding situations were constructed to identify contingent relations between the mealtime behavior problems exhibited by three children and their care giver’s response (i.e., systematic changes in the consequent stimuli preceding the child’s problematic behavior that alter the level of the problematic behavior). For two of the children, the primary function of the mealtime behavior problems identified by the analog analysis was escape from food presentation. For the other child, the analog revealed that access to toys and attention contingent on problem behavior were the most important variables maintaining the mealtime behavior problems. The results were somewhat consistent with other forms of functional assessment data (i.e., MAS, FAIF, A-B-C).

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