title: The role of self-injury in the organisation of behaviour.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Self-injuring acts are among the most dramatic behaviours exhibited by human beings. There is no known single cause and there is no universally agreed upon treatment. Sophisticated sequential and temporal analysis of behaviour has provided alternative descriptions of self-injury that provide new insights into its initiation and maintenance.
  
  
  METHODS
  Forty hours of observations for each of 32 participants were collected in a contiguous 2-week period. Twenty categories of behavioural and environmental events were recorded electronically that captured the precise time each observation occurred. Temporal behavioural/environmental patterns associated with self-injurious events were revealed with a method (t-patterns; THEME) for detecting non-linear, real-time patterns.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Results indicated that acts of self-injury contributed both to more patterns and to more complex patterns. Moreover, self-injury left its imprint on the organisation of behaviour even when counts of self-injury were expelled from the continuous record.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Behaviour of participants was organised in a more diverse array of patterns when self-injurious behaviour was present. Self-injuring acts may function as singular points, increasing coherence within self-organising patterns of behaviour.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Human Behaviour, School of Medicine, University of California, Irvine, Orange, CA 92868, USA. casandma@uci.edu
authors.forename: C A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Sandman
authors.forename: A S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Kemp
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Mabini
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Pincus
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Magnusson
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001519:Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D002658:Developmental Disabilities / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology*; D004777:Environment; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008960:Models, Psychological; D012112:Residential Facilities; D016728:Self-Injurious Behavior / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology*