Why We Do What We Do

Eric Kastan, MA, LMFT, BCBA

As a clinician, many people ask me why people behave in the manner they do, even when it makes no logical sense to engage in the behavior seen. A person’s behavior is not in a vacuum. There are many factors into why a person engages in a certain behavior or does not. In ABA, there are four main functions of a behavior: Social Reinforcement + (SR+), Social Reinforcement – (SR-), Automatic Reinforcement + (AR+), and Automatic Reinforcement – (AR-). Social reinforcement means that to get the outcome desired it requires another person. Automatic reinforcement does not require another person to get the outcome desired.  Positive (+) or negative (-), refer to adding or subtracting something in the environment.

A behavior that has a function of SR+ is done or maintained to get an outcome of attention or preferred tangible/task. A behavior that has a function SR- is done or maintained to get an outcome of escape or avoidance of a tangible or task. A behavior that has a function of AR+ is done or maintained to get a preferred internal sensation (seen with self-stimulatory behavior), and that does not require a presence of another person. A behavior that has a function of AR- is done or maintained to escape or avoid a non-preferred internal sensation (usually pain), and does not require a presence of another person.

Why is it so important to know the function of a behavior? It guides and dictates what the treatment plan should be and what interventions will be likely be more effective on a target behavior. To get to a hypothesized function of behavior, good data collection is needed. Data collection gives a visual and objective understanding of the behavior and also ways to see if proposed interventions are working. Data collection will be dealt with later in another post. I state the function of a behavior as a hypothesis because outside of a controlled laboratory setting, I cannot control all variables in the environment that may have an impact on the behavior.  There is a set procedure to use a controlled laboratory in order to get a “real” function of a behavior. However, when done in the field, there are factors I cannot account for and use the data to get as close as I can to “real” function of a behavior. The reason all this is tricky, is that a behavior may have more than one function, and the primary function may change depending on the context it is seen in.

The functions of behavior are innate to humans. A baby cries to get milk (SR+), or cries to get a diaper change (SR-). A baby sucks on their thumb because it “feels” good or calms them down (AR+), or sucks on their thumb to stop teething pain (AR-). As humans develop, the functions stay the same, but the behavior gets more sophisticated and complex. Separation of fine movements and procedures happen to get more effective outcomes.  This where understanding a function of a behavior is needed, once we understand what outcome is desired that elicits or maintains the target behavior, we can change the outcome or reinforce a more suitable replacement behavior to get the outcome desired.

Here at FACT, we use many theories and interventions to build the program that will work for you and your family. If you have any questions about possible services please contact our main office. If you have any question on behavior or topics you would like to see, please email me at [email protected].