Dear participant, in this part of the unit we will carry out the following analysis of

the topic to be studied.

 Concepts and types of functional analysis and clinical formulation.

 Personal variables of analysis (Predisposing, triggering, consequent,
perpetuating and protective).
 Types of hypothesis in clinical formulation.

Concepts and types of functional analysis and clinical formulation.

Functional Analysis is a behavioral tool for collecting information and

formulating hypotheses. It consists of the structured description, according to
the behavioral model, of the variables that intervene in the appearance,
maintenance and extinction of the behavior.
It is the basic clinical tool of all psychological therapy. Its object of analysis is
human behavior, although by definition it can be applied to any type of animal
behavior. The fundamental objective of Functional Analysis is to explain the
maintenance of behavior: why does an organism behave the way it does?
We understand Functional Analysis as the identification of variables,
antecedents and consequences that control behavior and the establishment of
relationships between these variables and said behavior.
Functional analysis is a clinical and research application in behavioral
assessment. Functional analysis is defined as the idiographic identification
(when speaking of behavioral clinical case formulation) or the systematic
manipulation (when speaking of experimental research) of variables and
functional relationships relevant to specific behavioral problems, under specific
conditions and environments.
Functional behavior analysis is a very useful tool that allows us to identify the
patient's behaviors, but without neglecting the context in which they occur or
what is behind their occurrence. This is a fundamental analysis when planning
and directing therapy or psychoeducational processes.
Schematically, the aspects that the Functional Analysis meets are the following:
• Identify antecedents and consequences of behavior.
• Identify the variables that influence the person.
• Formulate hypotheses about the problem behavior.
• Describe the behaviors.

Types of Functional Analysis

It is functional: although the first thing that is usually done is to identify and
describe the behaviors, this is done with a functional intention. That is, the aim
is to gather information to explain the problem and develop a therapeutic or
educational action plan, and it does not study static elements, but rather events
and actions that can be located in time.
Focus on the present: Considering personal history is an important aspect, but
we must focus on how the patient is behaving now.
Studies the relationships: the functional analysis of behavior is based on looking
at the relationships between behavioral events (emitted by the subject) and
environmental events (that occur around them). Therefore, it does not focus
solely on the individual, but rather sees the individual as a part of reality
interconnected with its environment, contrary to what happens with
psychological research proposals based on introspection.
It is dynamic: human behavior is something unstable. The patient may evolve
as the psychotherapy develops. In addition, it may be the case that the patient
himself did not initially provide all the information necessary to understand his
psychological discomfort.
It is ideographic: since it describes models and hypotheses focused on the
particular characteristics of the person in question. It is not a standardized,
nomothetic or generalizable model, and its development does not allow or seek
to establish general or absolute principles or laws.
It is heuristic: basically, this type of analysis is a scheme that describes the
person's behavior, through which we organize the information obtained about
him or her. It does not intend to describe human reality, only that of the patient
who has come for consultation.
It is hypothetical: although the ideal would be to be able to explain precisely
why a person behaves in that way, functional behavior analysis is still a tool that
proposes hypothetical explanations. That is to say, what is believed to be the
origin of the problem and what makes it persist can be modified, it is not
information that implies a clear and immutable causality.
Clinical Formulation
Clinical formulation, in addition to the formulation of hypotheses, involves the
generation of a causal model within which the different hypotheses are framed
and interrelated. The establishment of an explanatory molar model of causal
relationships also allows it to be applied to various fields, ranging from the
traditional clinical scheme of intensive intervention in the individual case
(behavioral therapy), through behavioral intervention in the organizational
environment, to addressing social problems at a molar level, such as health
prevention work at the community level or the modification of the behavior of
large segments of the population.
Clinical formulation constitutes the ultimate test of the strength of a behavioral
theory, since it is addressing, in practice, the fundamental question that
researchers ask under conditions of higher levels of control, that is, what are the
variables that determine behavior? The clinical formulation refers to the
fundamental problem of behavioral science, that is, causality. Indeed, the type
of clinical formulation is what differentiates approaches based on the scientific
method from those based on ideological or clinical knowledge. More than the
techniques themselves, which may be common to different therapeutic
approaches, there are two characteristics that determine the fundamental
difference between the various approaches or types of therapy: the
methodology or way in which relationships are established between the
observed data and the theoretical framework that serves as a basis for
establishing these relationships. The result of these operations gives rise to a
set of tentative causal propositions about the variables that explain the
development and maintenance of the behavior.

Since clinical formulation is based on the formulation of hypotheses about

relationships between different types of events, it is necessary to first analyze
the two main sources of information that allow generating clinical hypotheses:
direct data from behavioral observation and knowledge of regularities derived
from a theoretical framework.

Observation and data collection. As in any scientific research task, the initial
step, which will determine much of the subsequent activity, has to do with the
decision on the type of information to be obtained, that is, the nature of the data.
This decision, in turn, depends on theoretical assumptions about the relevance
of the information.

Theoretical framework. An additional source of hypotheses, besides the

observation of behavioral data, has to do with the theory that guides the
clinician in determining possible causal relationships. However, the existence of
an organized body of knowledge does not guarantee that it can generate
scientifically validable hypotheses, and may filter out the formulation of
hypotheses that are not contemplated by the theoretical framework, which leads
to a partial explanation of behavior.

Personal variables of analysis (Predisposing, triggering, consequent,

perpetuating and protective).

Types of hypothesis in clinical formulation.

The hypothesis in clinical formulation refers to the establishment of tentative
relationships between specific events or sets of events, of a probabilistic nature,
subject to validation, which allows predictions to be made about behavior.

The process of hypothesis formulation consists of a set of inductive operations

through which tentative functional relationships between events are inferred,
relationships that have a predictive value on future behavior. The fundamental
characteristic of clinical hypotheses thus formulated is that they can be
subjected to empirical verification and have the possibility of being falsified. In
other words, not all tentative explanations meet the requirements of hypotheses
as understood in the scientific method. A functional relationship exists when two
or more variables share the variance, that is, when we can speak of covariance
between variables, either in terms of topography or their control value.

Correlational hypotheses. When events that tend to occur regularly are

observed, that is, those that are predictable over time, hypotheses are
generated that describe associated or correlated variables, as occurs in the
case of classification systems. However, it is often the case that the observed
associations are considered to have explanatory value, when in reality what
they do is lay the conditions for the postulation and verification of causal
hypotheses.

Causal hypotheses. In causal functional relationships, not only are regularities

observed but the directionality of the relationship can be established. For a
functional relationship to be causal, it requires that there be precedence of the
causal variable, that there be information about the conditional probability
significantly greater than its unconditional probability (if A then B, else A then
not B), and thirdly, that causal relationships exclude alternative explanations.
Although it is much easier to attribute causality when related events occur close
in time, most problems arise when the causes are either distant or do not
correspond to specific events but to patterns or relationships between events.
We understand clinical case formulation as an integrated set of hypotheses and
clinical judgments about the functional relationships between problem behaviors
or treatment objectives and their causal variables. In this sense, the clinical
formulation of the case plays a fundamental role in understanding the client's
problems and in deriving possible treatments (Godoy and Haynes, 2011; emsp
Westmeyer, 2003). We do not deny, however, that such formulation also has
other objectives, such as identifying the areas where additional data are
needed, communicating to the client and other professionals what the proposed
intervention is based on, or teaching clinical psychology students to think
scientifically, with detail and precision, about their client.
Functional analysis is one of the possible approaches to clinical case
formulation (other approaches can be seen in Haynes, Godoy et al., 2011).
Functional analysis also serves to guide which assessment strategies can
enhance the validity and utility of clinical judgments. In the following sections we
present functional analysis as a paradigm for the formulation of clinical cases in
behavioral therapy. We define functional analysis, detail its various elements
and applications, and describe functional analytical clinical case diagrams
(FACCD) as a way of representing clinical formulation using functional analysis.