The use of functional analyses to test causes of self-injurious behaviour: rationale, current status and future...

Self-injurious behaviour (SIB) is a relatively common phenomenon among severely retarded persons and involves various repetitious behaviours resulting in tissue damage. Perhaps because of the damage it does, the behaviour has generated a considerable amount of applied research and discussion, and much of this research has involved attempts to reduce SIB through the manipulation of antecedents or consequences. The purpose of this paper was to determine the extent to which those conducting this research used a functional analysis of SIB to determine why the behaviour was occurring and subsequently matched treatment to one of these reasons. Results showed that only a small proportion of the studies reported analyses that would allow the experimenter to determine reasons for the self-injurious behaviour. The discussion centres on why functional analyses are not conducted in ways that would lend treatment to be based on hypotheses of why SIB occurs.