Effects of Discrimination Abilities on Functional Analysis Outcomes

Abstract

This study evaluated the extent to which conditional discrimination abilities affected a participant's differential responding during a standard multielement analogue functional analysis (FA). Eight individuals participated. The Assessment of Basic Learning Abilities (ABLA) was conducted with each participant prior to the FA to determine his or her discrimination ability. A brief FA was then conducted with all eight participants and recorded responding in FA conditions with and without the inclusion of programmed discriminative stimuli (SDs). Results indicated that all participants able to make a conditional discrimination demonstrated differential responding during the FA whereas only half of the participants unable to make conditional discriminations did so. Results also indicated that the inclusion of programmed SDs facilitated discrimination for the majority of the participants who were able to make a conditional discrimination and did not affect the responding of the participants who could not make the conditional discrimination.