Functional analysis (psychology)

Functional analysis in behavioral psychology is the application of the laws of operant and respondent conditioning to establish the relationships between stimuli and responses. To establish the function of operant behavior, one typically examines the "four-term contingency": first by identifying the motivating operations (EO or AO), then identifying the antecedent or trigger of the behavior, identifying the behavior itself as it has been operationalized, and identifying the consequence of the behavior which continues to maintain it. Functional assessment in behavior analysis employs principles derived from the natural science of behavior analysis to determine the "reason", purpose, or motivation for a behavior. The most robust form of functional assessment is functional analysis, which involves the direct manipulation, using some experimental design (e.g., a multielement design or a reversal design) of various antecedent and consequent events and measurement of their effects on the behavior of interest; this is the only method of functional assessment that allows for demonstration of clear cause of behavior. Functional analysis and consequence analysis are commonly used in certain types of psychotherapy to better understand, and in some cases change, behavior. It is particularly common in behavioral therapies such as behavioral activation, although it is also part of Aaron Beck's cognitive therapy. In addition, functional analysis modified into a behavior chain analysis is often used in dialectical behavior therapy. There are several advantages to using functional analysis over traditional assessment methods. Firstly, behavioral observation is more reliable than traditional self-report methods. This is because observing the individual from an objective stand point in their regular environment allows the observer to observe both the antecedent and the consequence of the problem behavior. Secondly, functional analysis is advantageous as it allows for the development of behavioral interventions, either antecedent control or consequence control, specifically designed to reduce a problem behavior.

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Functional analytic psychotherapy

Functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP) is a psychotherapeutic approach based on clinical behavior analysis (CBA) that focuses on the therapeutic relationship as a means to maximize client change. Specifically, FAP suggests that in-session contingent responding to client target behaviors leads to significant therapeutic improvements. FAP was first conceptualized in the 1980s by psychologists Robert Kohlenberg and Mavis Tsai who, after noticing a clinically significant association between client outcomes and the quality of the therapeutic relationship, set out to develop a theoretical and psychodynamic model of behavioral psychotherapy based on these concepts.

Clinical behavior analysis

Clinical behavior analysis (CBA; also called clinical behaviour analysis or third-generation behavior therapy) is the clinical application of behavior analysis (ABA). CBA represents a movement in behavior therapy away from methodological behaviorism and back toward radical behaviorism and the use of functional analytic models of verbal behavior—particularly, relational frame theory (RFT).

Contingency management

Contingency management (CM) is the application of the three-term contingency (or operant conditioning), which uses stimulus control and consequences to change behavior. CM originally derived from the science of applied behavior analysis (ABA), but it is sometimes implemented from a cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) framework as well (such as in dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT). Incentive-based contingency management is well-established when used as a clinical behavior analysis (CBA) treatment for substance use disorders, which entails that patients' earn money (vouchers) or other incentives (i.

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