Unmasking social functions: Outcomes from a retrospective consecutive case series of 19 applications

Prior research has identified the potential dangers associated with challenging behavior, specifically self-injurious behavior, and has thus highlighted the need to employ protective procedures to ensure the safety of individuals with self-injurious behavior. Although protective procedures can sometimes suppress responding, some small-n studies suggest they can also elucidate or unmask social functions when the initial functional analysis indicates that challenging behavior is only automatically maintained. However, large-scale studies of functional analysis outcomes indicate that co-occurring automatically and socially maintained challenging behavior is relatively uncommon. We conducted a retrospective consecutive case series study to describe a set of procedures to unmask social functions when the initial functional analysis indicated an automatic function. Results suggest that protective procedures unmasked social functions in 26.32% of cases.