The Value of Misbehavior

The Value of Misbehavior

Janet Ellis and Paul Chance

Why do children misbehave? Most people, including parents and educators, answer this question by pointing to something amiss in the child: He has a short attention span; she is a slow learner; he's immature.

When the misbehavior is severe or frequent, a psychologist is often asked to determine the precise nature of the child's malady. The psychologist typically does this by interviewing the child and giving one or more psychological tests. The psychologist's assumption, like that of most educators and parents, is that there is something inside the child that is at fault. Attention deficit disorder, dull-normal intelligence, and retarded emotional development are all likely candidates. (These terms are “fancy dress” for short attention span, slow learner, and immature.) Unfortunately, while the psychologist's diagnosis may offer a kind of explanation for troublesome behavior, it seldom suggests actions that improve the child's conduct.

Fortunately, there is an alternative to psychological assessment. Functional assessment is a systematic procedure for identifying the relationships between behavior and environmental events. It assumes that in most cases, misbehavior has some function, a value, for the child who misbehaves.

Sometimes this value is obvious, as in the case of the class clown who acts silly because doing so makes other children laugh. In many other cases, the value of misconduct is not at all obvious. Sometimes misbehavior results in criticism, embarrassment,lost privileges, and other negative consequences, so that it is difficult for people to believe that the child benefits from it. Even the child is often unable to identify how he or she profits from the behavior. In such instances, the value of misbehavior is a mystery that can be solved only by observing the child under carefully controlled conditions.

Functional assessment typically begins with observing the child in the settings where the misbehavior usually occurs. When school misconduct is the problem, the behaviorist observes the child in the classroom, usually for many hours. The purpose of these observations is to form hypotheses about what environmental events may be related to the behavior. These hypotheses are then tested by observing the child under carefully controlled conditions.

One hypothesis may be that the behavior has some intrinsic value. This possibility is tested by noting whether the behavior occurs when the child is alone. If a child spends a lot of time rocking back and forth, for example, and this behavior persists even when no one else is around, then the behavior is its own reward. If the behavior seldom occurs when the child is alone, then it's value probably has to do with the actions of other people.

Sometimes behavior occurs because it produces attention. To test this hypothesis, for a period of time the child receives attention whenever the behavior occurs; during another session the behavior produces no attention. For example, a child who uses offensive language may be looked at whenever he uses such words. If the behavior occurs more often under these circumstances than when his language is ignored, then it's likely that the behavior's value is that it brings attention.

A third hypothesis may be that the behavior enables the child to escape from demanding situations. To test this idea, the child is asked to do something difficult and if the misbehavior occurs, the demand is dropped. For example, a child who has tantrums may be asked to solve an arithmetic problem on the chalkboard, but if he has a tantrum the teacher gives the problem to another student. If the troublesome behavior occurs more often under these conditions than at other times, then its value is that it enables the child to escape from demanding situations.

A fourth hypothesis is that the behavior produces tangible rewards. If a child is more likely to pester his classmates when doing so is followed by being permitted to play a computer game than when it doesn't have this effect, then it's value is that it produces tangible rewards.

Functional assessment is more complicated and difficult than this summary implies, but you can see that the approach is very different from traditional psychological assessment. The great advantage of functional assessment is that once the value of a behavior has been identified, it is often possible to suggest effective interventions. If a child misbehaves because doing so produces attention, for example, we can see that we should (1) discontinue providing attention for the objectionable behavior and (2) provide the child with more acceptable ways of obtaining attention. If the behavior occurs because it results in escape from demands, we might (1) make the demands more realistic for that child and (2) teach the child other ways of indicating that he cannot meet a demand. And so on.

Functional assessment is time consuming, and for that reason some people consider it impractical. But how practical is it to allow students to disrupt classes, to shuttle them off to special classes they don't need, or to suspend them from school? And how practical is it to spend millions of dollars on psychological assessments that seldom suggest effective interventions? Perhaps we would be wiser to retrain school psychologists in functional assessment. Doing so might have great value for all of us.

Janet Ellis, Ph. D. is Associate Professor, Department of Behavior Analysis, at the University of North Texas in Denton. Paul Chance, Ph. D. is Book Review Editor of Psychology Today magazine.