Annotation: self-injurious behaviour in children with learning disabilities: recent advances in assessment and intervention.

Abstract

There has been a discernible shift in the focus of research on self-injurious behaviour in people with learning disabilities in the last 10 years. Within the behavioural literature an emphasis on the technological features of treatments has been replaced by a more analytical approach. This has in part been spurred by the debate about the use of aversive stimuli in interventions but is also a product of research that has increased in breadth and volume. Gentral to this analytical approach is the examination of the environment determinants of self-injurious behaviour, best exemplified by the increasing attention paid to the methodology and utility of functional analysis. Research in this area has fostered a more prescriptive and constructional approach to behavioural interventions, by highlighting the adaptive properties of self-injury and by empirical study of a variety of environmental determinants. This shift in emphasis has promoted the importance of considering the functions of all challenging behaviours over their forms. Whilst aggression and self-injury may differ immensely in terms of the actions, they may be evoked and reinforced by similar events. They may thus be said to have functional equivalence, i.e. may serve the same purpose, and both will be influenced in the same way if the events are similarly manipulated. Viewed from this perspective self-injury is no different to other challenging behaviours. It shares with them the property of being able to influence the behaviour of others because of its aversive nature. Another development in self-injury research in the past 15 years has been the steady accumulation of studies that implicate biological determinants, more