Commentary: enhancing the effectiveness of sleep treatments: developing a functional approach.

analysis, a series of conditions were recreated in order to determine the situations in which aberrant behavior was more or less likely to occur. In the “attention” condition, occurrences of SIB resulted in attention in the form of statements of disapproval or concern (e.g., “Stop that,” “Don’t do that,” “You’ll hurt yourself”) and/or physical contact (e.g., pats on the back). This condition was designed to test if behavior was maintained by positive reinforcement in the form of adult attention. In the “demand” condition, instructional activities were presented, and occurrences of SIB resulted in a break from instructions. This condition was designed to test if behavior was maintained by negative reinforcement in the form of removal of instructions or demands. In the “alone” condition, the participant was observed alone in a room. The purpose of this condition was to determine if SIB occurred in the absence of social stimulation (i.e., automatic reinforcement). A control condition (play) was also conducted in which the participant had access to preferred stimuli and attention. The purpose of this condition was to determine if SIB occurred when preferred stimuli and attention were provided and no demands were present. In their initial investigation, Iwata et al. (1994) noted that higher levels of SIB were associated with one test condition for two-thirds of the participants studied. These data indicated that different reinforcement contingencies maintained each participant’s SIB. This method demonstrated the possibility of experimentally identifying and controlling the relationships between certain behaviors and consequent events. Furthermore, the functional analysis procedure has been demonstrated to Journal of Pediatric Psychology, Vol. 24, No. 6, 1999, pp. 487–489