Identifying Behavior for a Functional Behavior Analysis

Identifying Behavior for a Functional Behavior Analysis Identify Behaviors The first step in an FBA is to identify the specific behaviors that are impeding a childs academic progress and need to be modified. They will most likely include one or more of the following: Leaving their seat during instruction.Calling out answers without raising their hand, or without permission.Cursing or other inappropriate language.Kicking or hitting other students or staff.Inappropriate sexual behavior or sexualized behavior.Self-Injurious Behavior, such as head banging, pulling fingers back, digging at skin with pencils or scissors. Other behaviors, such as violent ideation, suicidal ideation, long periods of crying or withdrawal may not be appropriate subjects for an FBA and a BIP, but may require psychiatric attention and should be referred to your director and the parents for appropriate referrals. Behaviors related to a clinical depression or schizo-effective disorder (early pre-cursor of schizophrenia) may be managed with a BIP, but not treated. Behavior Topography The topography of a behavior is what the behavior looks like objectively, from the outside. We use this term to help us avoid all the emotional, subjective terms we might use to describe difficult or annoying behaviors. We may feel that a child is being disobedient, whereas what we see is a child who finds ways to avoid classwork. The problem may not be in the child, the problem may be that the teacher expects the child to do academic tasks that the child cannot do. A teacher who followed me in a classroom put demands on the students that did not take their skill levesl into account, and she harvested a boatload of aggressive, defiant and even violent behavior. The situation may not be a problem of behavior, but a problem of instruction. Operationalize Behaviors Operationalize means to define the target behaviors in ways that they are clearly defined and measurable. You want the classroom aide, the general education teacher and the principal all to be able to recognize the behavior. You want each of them to be able to conduct part of the direct observation. Examples: General definition: Johnny doesnt stay in his seat.Operational definition: Johnny leaves his seat for 5 or more seconds during instruction. General definition: Lucy throws a tantrum.Operational definition: Lucy throws herself on the floor, kicks and screams for longer than 30 seconds. (If you can redirect Lucy in 30 seconds, you probably have other academic or functional fish to fry.) Once you have identified the behavior, youre ready to start collecting data to understand the function of the behavior.

The Use of Word Stems in English

The Use of Word Stems in English In English grammar and morphology, a stem is the form of a word before any inflectional affixes are added. In English, most stems also qualify as words. The term base is commonly used by linguists to refer to any stem (or root) to which an affix is attached. Identifying a Stem A stem may consist of a single root, of two roots forming a compound stem, or of a root (or stem) and one or more derivational affixes forming a derived stem.(R. M. W. Dixon, The Languages of Australia. Cambridge University Press, 2010) Combining Stems The three main morphological processes are compounding, affixation, and conversion. Compounding involves adding two stems together, as in . . . windows are to be found, however, where an affix is added to a bound stemcompare perishable, where perish is free, with durable, where dur is bound, or unkind, where kind is free, with unbeknown, where beknown is bound. . . . Stem Conversion Conversion is where a stem is derived without any change in form from one belonging to a different class. For example, the verb bottle (I must bottle some plums) is derived by conversion from the noun bottle, while the noun catch (That was a fine catch) is converted from the verb.(Rodney D. Huddleston,  English Grammar: An Outline. Cambridge University Press, 1988) The Difference Between a Base and a Stem Base is the core of a word, that part of the word which is essential for looking up its meaning in the dictionary; stem is either the base by itself or the base plus another morpheme to which other morphemes can be added. [For example,] vary is both a base and a stem; when an affix is attached the base/stem is called a stem only. Other affixes can now be attached.(Bernard ODwyer,  Modern English Structures: Form, Function, and Position. Broadview, 2000) The Difference Between a Root and a Stem The terms root and stem are sometimes used interchangeably. However, there is a subtle difference between them: a root is a morpheme that expresses the basic meaning of a word and cannot be further divided into smaller morphemes. Yet a root does not necessarily constitute a fully understandable word in and of itself. Another morpheme may be required. For example, the form struct in English is a root because it cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts, yet neither can it be used in discourse without a prefix or a suffix being added to it (construct, structural, destruction, etc.)  A stem may consist of just a root. However, it may also be analyzed into a root plus  derivational morphemes  . . .. Like a root, a stem may or may not be a fully understandable word. For example, in English, the forms  reduce  and  deduce  are stems because they act like any other regular verbthey can take the  past-tense  suffix. However, they are not roots, because they can be ana lyzed into two parts,  -duce, plus a  derivational  prefix  re-  or  de-.So some roots are stems, and some stems are roots. ., but roots and stems are not the same thing. There are roots that are not stems (-duce), and there are stems that are not roots (reduce). In fact, this rather subtle distinction is not extremely important conceptually, and some theories do away with it entirely.(Thomas Payne,  Exploring Language Structure: A Students Guide. Cambridge University Press, 2006) ​Irregular Plurals Once there was a song about a purple-people-eater, but it would be ungrammatical to sing about a purple-babies-eater. Since the licit irregular plurals and the illicit regular plurals have similar meanings, it must be the grammar of irregularity that makes the difference.The theory of word structure explains the effect easily. Irregular plurals, because they are quirky, have to be stored in the mental dictionary as roots or stems; they cannot be generated by a rule. Because of this storage, they can be fed into the compounding rule that joins an existing stem to another existing stem to yield a new stem. But regular plurals are not stems stored in the mental dictionary; they are complex words that are assembled on the fly by inflectional rules whenever they are needed. They are put together too late in the root-to-stem-to-word assembly process to be available to the compounding rule, whose inputs can only come out of the dictionary.(Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. William Morrow, 1994)