what is a challenging behaviour?
anything that challenges the system in which the child is exhibiting the behaviour.
…hitting themselves or other staff
…excessively noisy
challenging behaviours occur at high frequency with disability.
- challenging/ problem behaviours serves a function for the person, even if it looks pointless or not self-serving.
what components produces a challenging behaviour?
interaction between system that they’re living in and the child’s attributes somehow come together to produce a challenging behaviour.
how do we deal with challenging behaviours?
- change system
- give them new skills that enables them to achieve the same ends.
what is behaviour analysis?
behaviour analysis has greater emphasis on empirically backed methods and philosophical approaches.
- positive behaviour support exists in parallel with behaviour analysis today.
what is positive behaviour support?
Positive behaviour support (PBS) is a behaviour management system used to understand what maintains an individual’s challenging behaviour. based off the principles of ABA.
what is the basis for challenging behaviours?
People’s inappropriate behaviours are difficult to change because they are functional; they serve a purpose for them.
These behaviours are supported by reinforcement in the environment. In the case of children, often adults in a child’s environment will reinforce his or her undesired behaviours because the child will receive objects and/or attention because of his behaviour.
problems with choice in children with disability?
- people that the child interacts with are people they choose to interact with, and have choice in the activities they want to engage in.
- however there is restricted choice for those with disability. only people that interact with child are those who are paid to do it.
- fundamental choice in who you interact with and their reasoning for interaction (if they are paid).
- closed society, as person is placed in centres with paid interactions.
what is ABA/ Applied Behaviour Analysis?
Applied behaviour analysis is a scientific discipline concerned with applying techniques based upon the principles of learning to change behaviour of social significance.
- The ABA approach utilises two, well-researched learning theories. These are: 1) classical conditioning and 2) operant conditioning.
- In its most basic form, ABA is very simple and common sense. It rewards a person for making a correct choice. Incorrect choices are ignored, or not rewarded. Therefore, students learn by making simple associations between cause and effect. With repetition, a student learns to associate a correct action with a reward. As such, this correct choice will be repeated. An incorrect action does not earn a reward. When not rewarded, behaviours begin to slowly fade away. This process is known as extinction.
- within ABA, the only function of a behaviour is to get reinforcement.
what are positive reinforcers?
when introduced after a behaviour, it increases the frequency of a behaviour (smiling= pos. reinforcer)
what is stimulus control?
- behaviour gets reinforced in presence of of another stimulus (asking for sweets in a shop setting when parent is preoccupied and distracted)..
- such behaviour is not reinforced in a kitchen setting.
- people can be a stimulus control too, the child behaves in a certain way in presence of person A than with person B.
what are antecedents of behaviour?
things that precede behaviour in presence of a particular stimulus. the behaviour being reinforced is the fundamental idea of ABA.
what is negative reinforcement?
a behaviour that increases in frequency that leads to the removal of something.
- loud fan in a room can be annoying and aversive, child can either leave room or ask someone to turn it off.
- many behaviours can be reinforced to remove such stimulus.
example of avoidance and escapism?
child with autism and their aversion towards pop songs on the radio. children with autism can hear high frequencies with such songs that we cannot hear.
- child picked up radio and smashed it.
- trained himself to know what songs emitted such sounds.
- learned to escape and avoid sound.
avoidance?
Avoiding the stimulus that they find aversive
harder to see in clinical settings as they avoid the things they find aversive, we never get to see the thing that annoys them!
- the function of a problem behaviour is to either get something positive or to avoid something.
- the context they’re in determines whether the behaviour is reinforced or not…stimulus control.
what does Functional assessment aim to do?
FA aims to find the function of a behaviour.
the goal of the interaction is to find new ways of achieving the same goal:
1) make function redundant
2) give child new ways of achieving the goal, i.e. giving them a card for the activities they desire.
why is Functional Assessment not easy?
it’s not easy because we infer a function of the behaviour from observing the past.
- the same behaviour from the past might serve more than one function. child might have limited vocabulary an or mobility which means they can do few things. if this is the case then the things that they actually can do may serve more than one function, which makes figuring out what they want to be extremely difficult!
- we won’t see a consistent pattern between a behaviour and a particular outcome.
- interventions change the system, not the person. their lifestyle can be changed to facilitate their desired end goal.
how do we notice challenging behaviours?
they’re either:
- dangerous to the child itself or staff
- it’s extremely embarrassing
how do we manage challenging behaviours?
1) ignore the challenging behaviour, which can lead to extinction. but sometimes your removal might be what the child is trying to achieve. the function of the challenging behaviour may be to get you out of their face! you have to act on the behaviour at some point because you can only ignore it for so long.
- when you stop reinforcing a behaviour they will end very quickly.
- intermittently reinforcing a behaviour means that the behaviour will be far more persistent.
2) protect the child and others from harm. hold them or get others out of the room. but to be held might be the function of the behaviour!
3) introduce cues and access to non-problem behaviours serves as a distraction for the child with something else than engaging in their problem behaviour.
- distracting child with something else at the supermarket instead of focus on sweets.
- tangible reinforcers could be head banging, rocking themselves, need to be replaced by something else.
why do we see more challenging behaviours in children with intellectual disability?
- the environment that child with disability is put into:
many children with disabilities have language and communication deficits, which means they have to use other forms of language to communicate their needs to others. those forms could be challenging behaviours, hitting someone or screaming. - people with dis have a smaller repertoire of skills and stuff to do; it’s difficult to do things on their own: cannot hold pen so they cannot write letters, drawing could be a reinforcer to get better at it.
- learning a new instrument can be reinforcing when they reach a degree of proficiency, it is rewarding only when you become proficient.
- unusual sensory preferences: likes and dislikes.
children sometimes find noises to be aversive, like hand dryers; at least 1/3 children with ASD won’t go into public bathrooms because of hand dryer, which gets extended to shopping centres (example of avoidance). the things they’re avoiding may not be visible and is very difficult to know: not wanting to be touched/ wanting to be held.
what are the benefits of Questionnaires?
they list potential challenging behaviours/ antecedents and consequences of such reinforced behaviours.
- questionnaires detail the problem behaviours; description is unambiguous to another person and they can exactly understand what it looks like.
- health issues that are relevant with such behaviour; hearing loss, seizures, or before the onset of the behaviour.
asking what they’ve tried before is a good way of identifying the function as they’ve tried it for a reason.
- ask how did person gain your attention?
- when they need to tell you something how did they do it?
- how do they indicate likes and dislikes?
- how do they ask for help?
- is there a routine? how does child know what is happening next?
- is there a visible schedule that tells them what’s in store?
what are the problems associated with centres?
- centres used to be homely, now there are lot’s of hard surfaces, no curtains, no carpets which means no noise disappears quickly.
- how long a noise (noise level) remains in a room is directly correlated with level of challenging behaviours that occur.
- tiled floors, painted walls, hard clean surfaces everywhere are not a good place for children with ASD= noise will stay around for longer and will linger.
