Instructional influences on analogue functional analysis outcomes

Analogue assessments were conducted with a common contingency (escape from tasks) that varied only by three different instructions describing the contingency. In one con-dition, the contingency was described as ‘‘taking a break,’ ’ in another condition it was described as ‘‘time-out,’ ’ and no description of the contingency was provided in a third condition. The participant was a typically developing 5-year-old child with a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Rates of inappropriate behavior varied substan-tially across the three conditions as an apparent effect of the prior instructions. Some implications for conducting functional analyses with verbal children are discussed. DESCRIPTORS: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, functional analysis, instruc-tions, rule-governed behavior, verbal behavior The extension of functional analysis pro-cedures to typically developing children who discriminate spoken instructions is an emerging area of research and has resulted in a variety of relatively small but potentially important procedural variations. One such variation is whether or not children are given prior instructions regarding the specific con-tingencies associated with different analogue assessment conditions. Some studies using functional analyses with typically developing children have provided no prior instructions (e.g., Broussard & Northup, 1995), whereas others have provided specific instructions re-garding the contingencies associated with each condition (e.g., ‘‘if you talk, I will have to remind you to work quietly’’; Broussard & Northup, 1997). It might be expected that children with well-developed verbal rep-ertoires could be greatly influenced by a de-scription of contingencies. In general, accu-This study was funded in part by the National In-stitute of Mental Health. We thank the many LSU undergraduate students who made this research pos-sible. Address correspondence to John Northup, who i