Book Summary: Functional Assessment for Challenging Behaviors (Autism and Child Psychopathology Series)
edited by Johnny L Matson
edited by Johnny L MatsonWhile working in a community child mental health clinic, I found myself searching for resources to help with challenging behaviors such as self-injury and aggression. This is how I stumbled across this text. Not exactly what I was looking for since it focuses on challenging behaviors within a developmental diagnosis (e.g. ASD, PDD), but still a useful read.
This text was well-written and flows well. As a clinician, we are always after evidence-based research that informs practice. And this text delivers short and concise information backed up by research.
My Psychological Perspective:
To me, using the applied behavioural analysis (ABA) framework to formulate the presenting problems of a client is helpful to both me, and the client's understanding. It's what I always say in therapy, "we are more likely to do something again if we have been rewarded for it". And so, as the text describes, it's about finding the function of the challenging behavior. The review of case studies the authors presented was able to vividly present the importance and use of functional assessment.
The authors labor on about how functional assessments are implemented, which undoubtedly would be useful detail for a beginning practitioner or college student. The authors highlighted the importance of measurement, and if my clients would do the measurements, I am sure I would have more useful information for my baseline, treatment and outcomes. But sometimes I wonder what type of measurements would be most useful for clients, and I wish the authors could have addressed this more from a consumer's perspective.
And intuitively, the authors present research based treatments that follow on from functional assessments.
My Christian Perspective:
To me, using the applied behavioural analysis (ABA) framework to formulate the presenting problems of a client is helpful to both me, and the client's understanding. It's what I always say in therapy, "we are more likely to do something again if we have been rewarded for it". And so, as the text describes, it's about finding the function of the challenging behavior. The review of case studies the authors presented was able to vividly present the importance and use of functional assessment.
The authors labor on about how functional assessments are implemented, which undoubtedly would be useful detail for a beginning practitioner or college student. The authors highlighted the importance of measurement, and if my clients would do the measurements, I am sure I would have more useful information for my baseline, treatment and outcomes. But sometimes I wonder what type of measurements would be most useful for clients, and I wish the authors could have addressed this more from a consumer's perspective.
And intuitively, the authors present research based treatments that follow on from functional assessments.
My Christian Perspective:
I actually gave a talk about functional assessments for children's sunday school at a local church not too long ago. I emphasized similar points to the text- that it's crucial to understand the function of behavior we consider challenging. There are several outcomes of this (1) we let the behavior slide, because we understand the need and there is no risk to the child or others (2) we prevent or redirect the behavior (3) we give consequences to the behavior that means the child will choose not to do it again.
All this makes logical sense. But I think there are things we as humans can't understand with logic, because we are also emotional, and spiritual.
I believe that the authors rightly focused on challenging behaviors in children with ASD, PDD because challenging behaviors are highly prevalent in that sample, and also because when we consider other children/adults, there are more complicated domains we need to consider.
It is my hope that we take time to understand child behaviors, not only to change misbehavior, but in someway, understand what Jesus was talking about more. Mark 10:13-16.
All this makes logical sense. But I think there are things we as humans can't understand with logic, because we are also emotional, and spiritual.
I believe that the authors rightly focused on challenging behaviors in children with ASD, PDD because challenging behaviors are highly prevalent in that sample, and also because when we consider other children/adults, there are more complicated domains we need to consider.
It is my hope that we take time to understand child behaviors, not only to change misbehavior, but in someway, understand what Jesus was talking about more. Mark 10:13-16.
My overall rating:
I believe that this is a useful resource for college students as well as clinicians practicing in evidence-based child mental health. The editors were able to summarize pertinent research in a wide area and condense it into a logical sequence. They were able to describe challenging behaviors and the importance of functional assessments.
I was provided a review copy of Functional Assessment for Challenging Behaviors by the publisher but was not otherwise influenced in this review.
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