Social psychological models of reasoned action, and behavioural models of
verbal behaviour, predict that caregiver beliefs and attributions partially
determine their responses to challenging behaviours. The present study
examined the relationship between special educators’ causal attributions and
the underlying function of challenging behaviours in children with learning
disabilities. Sixty special school staff were presented with two questionnaire
vignettes describing attention seeking and task avoidance behaviour. They
were then asked to identify the likely causes of the behaviours. Only
a small proportion of participants made accurate causal attributions about
the two examples of challenging behaviour. In addition, staff experience had
little effect on the accuracy of attributions. Implications for future
research, for staff training, and analysis of challenging behaviours are
discussed.