Funziono, dunque sono? Un’analisi globale dei fattori di sviluppo nelle disabilità

The field of developmental disabilities has paid little attention to the obvious fact that children’s ‘abnormal’ development, in addition to biological factors, involves learning from behavior–environment interactions. “A Global Analysis of Functions and Processes in Disabilities” is truly unique in that it incorporates the processes involved in developmental disabilities, provides assessment tools of disabilities, and explains how to conduct a functional assessment and functional analysis of behavior–environment interactions. Olimpia Pino present behavioral principles and emphasize the role of context in a systematic and fairly sophisticated manner. The relevant content and pragmatic approach of this text can be contrasted with the simplistic and limited treatment of behavioral principles and methodology often received in textbooks of developmental disabilities. There are two fundamental questions in development of behavioral disabilities – what develops and how does it develop? The "what" is largely a question of developmental structure and describes development, while the "how" is primarily a question of function and process and, it explains developmental change. As shown in this book, the field of Developmental Disabilities in psychology should be increasingly focused on observation, functional assessment, and the process responsible for disabilities. As seen in Chapter 1, the authors’ approach is one that incorporates both biological factors and evolution of the traditional classification systems and the environmental influences. The text focuses on the constant reciprocal interactions between nature (biomedical and biophysiological influences) and nurture (environmental influences like family and school). It considers learning principles, the role of adaptive behavior, quality of life, as well as risk factors and well-being, and health as the major factors affecting disabilities. But most importantly, it considers reinforcement as the main process for change in development and the integration of environmental influences with genetic and historical factors. The most interesting aspect of this book is that it links traditional assessment tools for observation and individualized evaluation procedures (Chapters 2) with contemporary functional analysis of behavior (Chapter 3). Chapter 3 integrates the views of traditional assessments and behavioral observations with a functional analysis of the environment–behavior relation and provides extensions of the original procedure. This combination of methodological approaches is unique and from it something new emerges – a functional approach to developmental disabilities that takes into account the analysis of context and its functions (Chapter 4). The book is unique in that it connects developmental disabilities to learning concepts; a topic neglected in most psychology books.