4 Phases of Intervention (A PIE)
Assessment
Planning
Implementation
Evaluation
Assessment (Functional Behavior Assessment-FBA)
A systematic
... [Show More] method for obtaining information about the FUNCTION challenging behaviors serve for an individual.
What else does an FBA do?
Allows us to make empirically-based hypotheses fro WHY behaviors occur.
Methods used in FBA
Direct observations, interviews, checklists, and tests to identify targets for behavior change.
How does an FBA help with intervention?
Discovers resources, assets, significant others, competing contingencies, maintenance and generalization factors, and potential reinforcers/punishers that my be included in the intervention plan.
Purposes of Assessment
Identifies and defines targets for behavior change.
Guides us to create effective and positive interventions.
Ethics Devil Warning: Assessments
You have to choose the RIGHT BEHAVIORS for assessment, so you need to know what is SOCIALLY SIGNIFICANT and be able to prioritize behaviors.
Skilled at conducting assessments.
Accept as clients only those individuals or entities whose behavior problems or requested service are commensurate with your education, training, and experience.
5 Phases of Assessment
1. Screening and General Deposition
2. Defining and quantifying problems or desired achievement criteria
3. Pinpointing target behaviors to be treated
4. Monitoring Progress
5. Following-Up
Ethics Devil Warning: Pre-Assessment Considerations
Before conducting assessment, ask critical questions: Who has the Authority, Permission, Resources, Skills to complete an assessment and intervene with the behavior?
Also, obtain the client's or client-surrogate's approval before implementing them.
Indirect Assessment Measures
Data obtained from recollections, reconstructions, or subjective ratings of events. (interviews, checklists)
Direct Assessment Measures
Provide information about a person's behavior as it occurs.
PREFERRED CHOICE over indirect measures. (Tests, direct observations)
4 Ways to Acquire Information for Assessments (COIT)
Checklists
Observation
Interviews
Tests
Checklists
Likert scales
Alone or with interview rating scales
Asks about antecedents and consequence of the target behaviors.
PUBLISHED SCALES: Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), Adaptive Behavior Scale-School (ABS-S), Adaptive Behavior Scale-Residential and Community (ABS-RC)
Observation (Direct Observation)
Direct and repeated in the natural environment
Identifies potential target behaviors.
Preferred method.
Interviews (Structured Behavioral Interviews)
First step in identifying list of behaviors, which can be used later in direct observation.
Interview (The individuals)
Ask "What", "When", "etc. questions. DO NOT ASK "WHY".
Identify the primary concerns of the individual.
You can give the individual questionnaires or have them record self-monitoring data.
Interview (Significant others)
Sometimes one cannot interview the individual directly or one needs information from important others (e.g., parents)
Interviewing significant others if a great way to assess the participation of significant others in your intervention plan.
Tests (Standardized Tests)
Many published standardized tests exist.
Consistent administration is key: Each time a standardized test is administered, the same questions and tasks are presented in a specified way and the same scoring criteria and procedures are used.
Most standardized tests do NOT work well with FBA because results are not translated directly into target behaviors.
Anecdotal Observation (ABC Recording)
Basic from of direct observation.
Temporally sequenced description of behavior patterns.
Requires total attention of observer for at least 20-30 minutes continuously.
Not good option for classroom teacher.
Do NOT write interpretations; only what is observable and measurable.
Carry out for several days so reactivity effects can decrease.
Review records and data
Review all records and available data (data collected from previous agencies, school, etc.)
This is part of your INDIRECT FBA.
Ethical Devil Warning: Consider Biological/Medical Variables that may be affecting the client
RULE OUT MEDICAL CAUSES FOR PROBLEM BEHAVIOR.
You should recommend seeking a medical consultation if there is any reasonable possibility that a referred behavior is a result of a medication side effect or some biological cause.
Conduct a preliminary assessment of the client in order to identify the referral problem
Information is gathered "indirectly" via interviews, rating scales, screening forms, etc.
When conducting a preliminary assessment of the client, ask yourself if there is a need for intervention: Behavior a danger? Affect the client's well being? Prevent the individual from accessing less restrictive environments in various settings? (separated from same age peers? losing placement?) How does the behavior compare to same-aged, typically developing peers?
Ethics Devil Warning: Explain Behavioral Concepts Using Non-Technical Language
When speaking with others, you want to be careful about using very complicated, technical behavior-analytic language.
Describe and Explain Behavior, including private events in behavior-analytical (non-mentalistic terms)
When conducting an assessment and talking to various people about the client, you should speak in your behavioral language.
Do NOT discuss the problems in mentalistic terms ("He is aggressive because he has ASD).
Why? Because speaking to others in mentalistic terminology does not offer a solution.
Provide Behavior-Analytic Services in Collaboration with Others who Support and or Provide Services to One's Client
Cooperating with other professionals in order to serve your clients effectively and appropriately.
Select intervention strategies based on environmental and resource constraints
The physical, material, and human resources in the family or organizations within which the change is to occur.
Being aware of environmental and resource constraints.
Identify and Make environmental Changes That Reduce the Need for Behavior Analysis Services
Sometimes you do not have to create a complicated treatment package for the client's inappropriate behavior.
Environment (Ecology): Not just the physical setting in which the client lives and or works, but the people in that environment as well.
If environmental conditions hamper implementation of the behavior analytic program, you seek to eliminate the environmental constraints, or identify in writing the obstacles to doing so.
Ecological Assessment
A great deal of information is gathered about the individual and the various settings in which that individual lives and works.
Included is information about physiological conditions, physical settings, interactions with others, home environment, etc.
Creates a lot of descriptive data.
Costly in terms of time, money, etc.
One should know when it is appropriate use.
Reactivity
The effects of assessment process on the behavior of the individual being assessed.
Reactivity most likely when observation methods are obtrusive (obvious to the individual).
Reactive effects are usually temporary.
Self-monitoring
Most obtrusive data collection method.
To reduce reactivity
Be as unobtrusive as possible.
Repeat observations until reactive effects subside.
Take effects into account when interpreting your data.
Assessing Social Significance of Potential Target Behaviors
Consider whose behavior is being assessed and why. Not OK to change behavior for benefit of others or because you want to. Always ask yourself, "to what extent will the proposed change improve the person's life?"
Habilitation (adjustment)
Assesses meaningfulness of change.
Is this change really useful to the client?
Habilitation occurs when a person's repertoire has been changed such that short and long-term reinforcers are maximized and short and long term punishers minimized.
You want to assess if the target behaviors you might potentionally change in a client will be habilitative for your client. In order to do so, ask yourself the 10 questions below.
10 Questions to Ask Yourself Evaluating the Habilitation/Social Significance of Target Behaviors
See Page 106-107
Relevance of Behavior Rule
Is the behavior likely to produce reinforcement in the client's natural environment after intervention ends.
Access Behaviors
A means of producing indirect benefits to clients.
EX: Students in special education classes are often taught to stay in their seats in class, interact politely with others, etc. These behaviors are taught with the expectation that they will increase acceptance into general education classroom. (Increase access)
Normalization (Mainstreaming)
The belief that people with disabilities should, to the maximum extent possible, be physically and socially integrated into mainstream society regardless of the degree or type of disability.
The use of progressively more typical settings and procedures to establish personal behavior which are as culturally normal possible.
Behavior Cusps
Behaviors that open a person's world to new contingencies.
"Exposes the individual's repertoire to new environments, especially new reinforcers and punishers, new contingencies, new responses, new stimulus controls, and new communities of maintaining or destructive contingencies.
Example (Behavioral cusp)
For an infant, specific arm, head, and leg movements would be COMPONENT behaviors for crawling, but crawling is a CUSP because it enables the infant to contact new environments (e.g., toys, parents).
Pivotal Behaviors
Relates to treatment of people with autism and developmental disabilities.
A behavior that, once learned, produces corresponding modifications or co-variations in other adaptive untrained behaviors.
Once the behavior is learned it will lead to more complex behaviors.
Similarities of Behavior Cusps and Pivotal Behaviors
Both are behaviors you want to TEACH first to clients. Why? Because they are behaviors upon which other behaviors can be built. [Show Less]