Further evaluation of latency measures in the assessment and treatment of severe self‐injurious behavior

Abstract

Recent research has demonstrated the utility of latency measures during the functional analysis of problem behavior; however, few studies have evaluated the utility of latency measures during subsequent treatment analyses. The current study seeks to extend the literature on the use of latency measures during the treatment of severe self‐injurious behavior (SIB). Following a latency‐based functional analysis, a treatment analysis was conducted using a hybrid procedure in which baseline sessions were terminated following the first instance of SIB, and test sessions ended after a fixed length of time. Latency to SIB was compared across conditions, whereas latency and rate measures for both SIB and functional communication responses were compared for the functional communication training condition. Results suggest that latency measures may be too sensitive during treatment analyses and that it is beneficial to use a hybrid procedure that allows for both latency and rate comparisons.

Reliability and validity of using structured visual‐inspection criteria to interpret latency‐based functional analysis outcomes

“…If it was clear that the graph was formatted in a way that was not conducive to our rules for extracting data (e.g., plotting in the center of the data point), different rules were developed that were calibrated and individualized to that particular graph. For example, for Perrin et al’s (2018) participant, the center of data points at 300 s did not appear to align with 300 s on the y axis. Instead, we used the same calibration techniques as with previous graphs to identify that the bottom (rather than the center) of the data points graphed at 300 s aligned with this value on the y ‐axis.…”

“…In general, we excluded datasets if they (a) did not utilize a multielement design (e.g., trial‐based FA design; Neidert et al, 2013), (b) only included two conditions (i.e., test–control pairwise design; e.g., Caruthers et al, 2015; Harper & Luiselli, 2019), (c) lacked a control condition, or (d) did not conduct more than two sessions for some conditions (e.g., Falcomata et al, 2014). If an article contained several latency‐based FA datasets, only those that met all criteria were included (i.e., Perrin et al, 2018). In some instances, no dataset(s) within an article met inclusion criteria, so the latency‐based FA datasets, and subsequently the entire article, were excluded.…”