Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences, Vol. 18, Iss. 3, July, 2014, pp. 277-296 @2014 Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences The Role of Self-Injury in Behavioral Flexibility and Resilience Abstract: Severe and persistent self-injurious behavior (SIB) is notoriously difficult to understand and to treat.
The current study used self-organization theory to investigate the possible relationship between SIB and
changing levels of behavioral flexibility. Data consisted of categorical time-series of sequential behaviors
from individuals with developmental disabilities and severe SIB. Orbital Decomposition was used to analyze
each series for measures of structure and entropy. Overall, results showed evidence for self-organization
in behavior patterns. Second, series including SIB were on average more flexible than those without SIB; while,
higher numbers of SIB events (perseveration) were associated with higher behavioral rigidity and
structural disintegration. Finally, there was evidence that behavioral flexibility almost always
shifts reliably after a discrete bout of SIB, either increasing or decreasing in complexity. Altogether,
these results may provide a deeper and more theoretically grounded understanding of the function of
SIB beyond the traditional behavioral paradigm involving simple stimulus-response or response-consequence relations.
Instead, some behaviors, such as SIB, may serve a resilience-making function as more
global regulators of behavioral flexibility and coherence. Keywords: self-injurious behavior, orbital decomposition, nonlinear dynamics, entropy, fractal, self-organization |