The needs assessment assignment will consist of two parts: a) the creation of the needs assessment (understanding what area your population needs to improve on), the development of instruments to coll

AUTISM INTERVENTION 0

Autism Behavioral Intervention Strategies

Anabel Caraza Cruz

Laura Rodriguez

Albizu University

EEXX 507 Instructional Design and Assessment

Dr. Arbelo

June 15, 2020

Abstract

The high achievement in school has been associated with on-task behavior in the classroom. The students who have autism have difficulty in staying on the task and avoiding task refusal behavior. It is important to have effective interventions that are required to assist students with autism to stay on their tasks and achieve success in their school work. The interventions should be geared towards home learning where parents and guardians can assist in learning. The literature review looks at antecedent, consequent, and behavioral strategies. It is important to look at the effects of these interventions on the learning outcomes of the autistic students. Interventions for these students involves adopting consistency and discipline while carrying out the tasks. It is important to make sure that special education has a schedule, and students know what to expect when they behave in a predetermined manner. There should be positive reinforcement when certain achievements are made.

Introduction

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD or autism) has various characteristics such as restricted interests, presence of repetitive behaviors, and difficulty in social interactions (Deris & Di Carlo, 2013). The differences in social interactions is driven by the challenges in communication among the patients. The students who have autism may be unable to maintain eye contact, engage in meaningful conversation, and have matching facial expressions. Autism presents a group of neurological and developmental disorders that have a range in terms of severity and symptoms. There are those students who will be intellectually gifted while others may face challenges that will affect their behavior immensely. Research has shown that boys are five times more likely to develop autism when compared to girls (Jones et al., 2016). At the same time, there is development of the autism in 1 of every 70 children. The prevalence of the spectrum together with tis diversity in terms of abilities makes it challenging for teachers both in general education and special education (Rigler et al., 2015). There are more students present in the classrooms who have the autism. It is important to note that the same challenge is on the parents who have to deal with cases that are special with little material available on the condition. It is important for educators/parents to have the ability to meet the needs of each of their students (Radley & Dart, 2016). The individuals who have a struggle with autism will struggle in education because of the characteristics that come with the condition.

Education can be challenging for the students with autism because they are not independent. The students will have to rely on an adult to deal with the various activities that are presented. There are several school districts that have aides to assist in serving these students in the class. Some of the students are also designated to one side of the class (Harned & Initiative, 2017). The challenge is also seen when it comes to home learning where the parents might not have sufficient time to deal with all of the needs of the children. The student will have an adult with them all of the time and it is difficult to develop independence which is a critical tool in learning. The child is denied the chance to struggle and develop the ability to take on tasks on their own. The students who have autism at the same time will tend to be perfectionists and this can be manifested in behaviors such as task refusal (Habib et al., 2018). It is critical to find ways of helping the students and ensuring that the presence of teachers, parents and aides does not hinder their progress.

Conceptual Framework

Autism leads to students having some form of off-task behavior which affects their learning. Off-task behavior is where the student or child is engaging in inappropriate interactions with their immediate environment that is against the instruction. The students will attend to some other stimuli as opposed to following the class. The off-task behavior has been regarded as the biggest factor when it comes to loss of the instruction time in the classroom. The parents at home or the teacher will find themselves redirecting their efforts to gaining back the attention of the child. The children who have general education will engage in off task behavior such as looking at their phones, out of windows, or in conversation (Jones et al., 2016). The situation is worse when it comes to autistic students where the parents will engage in a particular task and it becomes difficult to get their attention again. The engagement in on-task behavior is what is needed to get the students to have better academic outcomes.

On-task behavior is important in all situations whether at home or at school. It is important for students to engage in the instruction as opposed to attending to their own activities. The on-task behaviors will lead to a higher academic achievement (Nguyen, 2019). The children learn how to concentrate in class as well as complete various activities. On-task behavior is assisted through development of executive functioning skills. The executive functioning is the use of the mental skills that will assist the individual to organize, plan, as well as complete their tasks (Saggers & Ashburner, 2019). There are various associated skills such as flexible thinking, self-control, as well as working memory. The executive functioning is used for recalling instructions, planning projects, time management, and completion of homework. The skills mentioned are important in the daily life of a child. The majority of students with autism will lack the skills for executive functioning and this is where the intervention strategies are necessary.

There are various evidence-based practices that have been developed for working with learners with autism. The prompting involves physical, gestural, and verbal assistance that is provided to students to assist them in engage in the task of behavior. An example of such a prompt is the teacher asking the students to put their names on their work by asking them about the first thing they do when they get a paper. The students will respond by saying that they are supposed to put their name on it. When such a prompt in inappropriate, there will be development of dependence which increasing helplessness among the child (Pellecchia et al., 2020). The prompt dependence is experienced where the child will require to be given a prompt so that they can complete a duty that they already have good knowledge about. The presence of dependence on a given promote will lead to impeding of the ability to develop independence and lead to difficulty in staying on the task. The students can understand how to write their names on a paper but will wait for the teacher to prompt them because they are already dependent (Bottema-Beutel et al., 2019). It is important for parents and teacher to understand various forms of support to give their children which may be once needed but should not be extended for long.

There should be a strategy of decreasing support for the child until they have an understanding of the task without finding it necessary to be prompted (Tullis et al., 2017). It is important to look at various examples for the parents to understand which strategy is best for the child to assist them in the learning process. It is critical to understand how to increase the on-task behavior for autistic students when they are learning at home. There are various consequent strategies and behavioral interventions that can reduce the task refusal behavior (Pellecchia et al., 2020). There are various behavioral strategies that can be used to make sure that the student is fully exploiting the opportunities handed to them. There are various interventions that can be useful at home such as low-probability request, redirection, high probability request, tokens board, premack principle, and positive reinforcement.

Review of Literature

Antecedent, Consequent, and Behavioral Interventions

Antecedent interventions are the people, events, and things that come immediately before the problem behavior. They can be related to the environment, the people present, or the time of the day. There are several antecedents present among the autistic children such as taking away their toy, being teased by parents or children, or can involve absence of something such as attention from an adult. There are several antecedent interventions that are present (Will et al., 2018).

A common intervention is the elimination of the antecedent event. There are some events that can be completely removed from the environment. In one of the studies, there was a high school student who engaged in the off-task behavior so that they can escape a vocational task. The antecedent event that was there was use of negative rule statements which were made by the teacher such as “You need to complete your work without complaining.” (Rigler et al., 2015). The antecedent intervention which worked in this case was elimination of the negative statement and ignoring the behavior of the student. The elimination of the negative verbal rule statement in the study led to a reduction in the intensity and frequency of the off-task behavior (Zager & Wehmeyer, 2019).

There are circumstances where such an event or a task cannot be eliminated. An example is where the child is engaging in off-task behaviors so as to avoid reading where they find it difficult. Elimination of the reading is not possible. An alternative to this is temporary elimination of the instruction to reduce the occurrence of the off-task behavior (Jones et al., 2016). When the behavior starts occurring at acceptable levels, them the instruction can resume.

There are some antecedent interventions that have been identified in several studies which assist in modifying the content to reduce the off-task behavior. The first one is the inclusion of the interests of the child. This type of intervention involves identification of the preferences of the student and modifying it into the on-task behavior to reduce the child going off-task during instruction (Chou et al., 2017). The area of interest can be included in the instruction to capture their attention during learning. The behavior of a child, for example, interest in balloons or cars, can be incorporated into learning to help in increasing participation in the instruction.

There can also be a change in the difficulty of the task to make sure that there is elimination of errors. There is a relationship between the task difficulty and the problem behavior of the students. The difficult tasks will be associated with more errors, corrective feedback that is more frequent, and lower rates of positive reinforcing (Thompson & Arns, 2019). All of these conditions can lead to higher levels of stress and frustration as well as decrease in the response of the student. The child will want to escape the problem behavior more often and avoid the tasks that are there. There can be modification of the instruction to make sure that the experiences are better. In one study, the antecedent intervention was being implemented on a student who was engaging in negative verbal comments, property destruction, and aggression. The student was engaging in these when they were asked to complete English worksheets (Woodruff, 2019). The worksheets that were affecting the students involved punctuation, capital letters as well as abbreviations. The behavioral assessment showed that the student was at the first-grade reading level but they were being required to read at the fourth-grade level. The intervention that worked was modifying the reading tasks so as to compensate the deficits in the reading skills.

There are adaptions that are needed to reduce the difficulty of a task without involving lower expectations at the workplace (Oishi et al., 2017). There are some interventions that will include promoting the student before there are errors to reduce the number of mistakes. There are prompting procedures that can be introduced for the child such as gestural, verbal, and physical prompts that will be faded systematically until the child can be able to complete tasks alone (Mayes et al., 2018). The tasks that the children are engaging in can be made mor meaningful. These of the tasks can come with more functional outcomes that are immediate on the life of the learner. It is important to have immediate positive reinforcement and will decrease the problem behavior and increase the academic response. The learner can be instructed to write captions on a photo album as opposed to practicing their writing on a book. The isolation of a skill forms the daily life can lead to the loss of interest in the activity.

There are also interventions that focus on changing the mode of presentation of the instructional content. One of the ways is through behavioral momentum. The student can be asked to complete several tasks that they are more likely to engage in before they are asked to participate in the nonpreferred duty. The use of this intervention increases the opportunities of presenting the student with the positive feedback. One of the studies showed that it is critical to vary the high-probability requests for every time that they are used. Others method of changing the instruction can be to reduce the length of the tasks. The length can be reduced to shorter parts that will give the student the sense of completion. The aversiveness towards a challenging assignment will reduce as the student becomes more engaged in the short tasks.

There can be increase in the opportunities for choice by the student. There are several studies that have showed that providing the leaner with a choice of possible tasks can increase their response to on-task behavior. One of the strategies that can be useful at home is the classroom management strategies. There should be creation of a comfortable price as well as a good flow of activities so that leaners are engaged. There should be a smooth transition between the activities in the learning environment (Chaldi, 2019). The instructor at home should also increase the predictability of events. Students with autism will decrease their off-task behavior when they are aware of the events that are coming up next. It is important to have a daily schedule and model new tasks especially those that are associated with the problem behavior. These antecedent interventions are geared towards decrease in the escape-motivated behaviors developed by students.

There are some consequent strategies that can help in modifying the behavior of the learner. One that has been identified in several studies is ensuring there is consistency, follow-through on activities, and setting of expectations. There can be several expectations such as telling a child they can play once they finish some given homework (Smith, 2019). The consistency with the task will ensure that the learner understands what is expected and will learn to trust what they are told. When the behavior is established, one can easily fade back and allow them to be independent in their duties. When giving instructions inconsistently and lack of implementation of the activities, the autistic child will not understand what they can expect at a particular time. The learner can develop anxiety and the off-task behavior will reign when they cannot predict what will come next. Autistic children rely a lot on the instructor being predictable (Bernard & Hammel., 2017). There should be a set routine everyday and this will help in learning at home or in the class. When things are not going according to the set plan, there can be various forms of rebellion because of the unpredictability.

The next consequent strategy is to make sure that there is acknowledgement when the child has complied with the requests that one has given. When the learner has learned to obey the instruction, ensure that there is positive reinforcement such as commending them. At the same time, there can be a gift for the significant adoption or change in behaviors. Each opportunity for acknowledging behavior can be presented as a learning chance for the students who understand language well. The teacher or parent should also tell the children what they expect specifically and give them the chance to earn various privileges when they comply with the expectations. When the learner develops tantrums when doing their homework, they should be told what is expected of them when doing the homework followed with the reward for meeting the expectation (Zdrojewski, 2018). The leaner should be encouraged to understand that they will gain privileges when they learn how to follow the set rules. There are privileges such as watching a show if they act as they are supposed to. When the learner has earned a given privilege, it is important to use a specific language. One of the languages that can be used is “You completed the English homework, you did well. Nice work! Now you can have some computer time. The privilege that is provided needs to be something which the child values. The child can also be given the choice to choose what to work for before the given time.

The strategies that are used incorporate giving the student some form of choice. The learners with autism want to get a sense of control over their immediate environment. The children can benefit when they are given a choice of under five options to make it easier for them. The choices can be given to them using language or they can be shown pictures for those who have a problem with verbal communication (Deris & Di Carlo, 2013). The other consideration that should be there is giving the child the ability to introduce a transitional object as they move from one activity to another. The child while learning from home can bring with them an object which they are attached to from school. The introduction of such an object can assist in bringing comfort to an environment that they might be unfamiliar with when it comes to learning.

The parent or guardian to a student can direct or distract them from the off-task or problematic behavior as opposed to ordering them to stop. Several studies have shown that this is important instead of simply shouting no (West, 2018). The parent can find something that will call the attention of the child as opposed to laying focus on the problematic behavior. The child can be redirected back to the learning environment. The children who have trouble with language can be instructed using gestures as opposed to just providing the verbal direction that they might not be understanding (McCollow et al., 2016).

Studies have also been conducted that show that situations where the child is over-stimulated can lead to increase in the problematic behavior. The situation in the learning environment should be studied to make sure that the child is not feeling overwhelmed (Tsai et al., 2020). When the home is overcrowded, the child might not be able to fully learn in this situation. The disturbance to their senses can lead to an increase in the off-task behavior. There should be learning in an environment where there are less sensory inputs during learning (Bernard & Hammel., 2017). The directions that are given to the child need to be short, concrete, and clear. Every moment at home that can be teachable should be fully exploited to ensure a continuous learning environment. It is important to give clear directions together with an understanding of when certain tasks are supposed to end. Each task should come with a timeline for the students.

Summary and Future Research

The literature review focused on the effects of antecedent, consequent strategies, as well as behavioral interventions when it comes to reduction of the task refusal behavior. It is important to use various types of interventions to make sure that the learner at home is benefiting from the situation. There are several interventions that can be used such as a scheduled delivery of attention, positive retirement, inquest, as well as redirection.

It is important to look at the situations that are there when dealing with students to make sure they are having the utmost concentration. Each of the learners need to be in an optimal environment for learning. There should be adoption of the methods that will emphasize the role of the students in reducing their problematic behavior. It is critical to make sure that each of the strategies is reducing the off-task behavior to enhance instruction at home.

Future research can look at areas where technology can be utilized to deal with the task refusal behavior. In the modern day, there is integration of the technology in the general class environment.it can be critical to look at technology-based interventions that can help the parents and guardians to manage the home learning environment better. The effects of these strategies should also be investigated.

References

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