Delineating subtypes of self-injurious behavior maintained by automatic reinforcement

• Published in: Journal of applied behavior analysis Vol. 48; no. 3; pp. 523 - 543
• Main Authors: Hagopian, Louis P., Rooker, Griffin W., Zarcone, Jennifer R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.09.2015
• Subjects: Adolescent; Autism Spectrum Disorder - psychology; automatic reinforcement; Behavior Problems; Child; Child, Preschool; Collaboration; Female; functional analysis; Humans; Intellectual Disability - psychology; Male; Negative Reinforcement; Pain; Reinforcement (Psychology); Researchers; Self destructive behavior; self-injurious behavior; Self-Injurious Behavior - psychology; Skin; Studies; Young Adult; self-injurious behavior; automatic reinforcement; functional analysis
• ISSN: 0021-8855; 1938-3703; 1938-3703
• DOI: 10.1002/jaba.236

Self‐injurious behavior (SIB) is maintained by automatic reinforcement in roughly 25% of cases. Automatically reinforced SIB typically has been considered a single functional category, and is less understood than socially reinforced SIB. Subtyping automatically reinforced SIB into functional categories has the potential to guide the development of more targeted interventions and increase our understanding of its biological underpinnings. The current study involved an analysis of 39 individuals with automatically reinforced SIB and a comparison group of 13 individuals with socially reinforced SIB. Automatically reinforced SIB was categorized into 3 subtypes based on patterns of responding in the functional analysis and the presence of self‐restraint. These response features were selected as the basis for subtyping on the premise that they could reflect functional properties of SIB unique to each subtype. Analysis of treatment data revealed important differences across subtypes and provides preliminary support to warrant additional research on this proposed subtyping model.