Why Autistic Children have Difficulties with Behavior - Case Study Example

Behavior for Learning A kind of developmental disorder which appears in children below the age of three is autism. When the brain’s normal development of communication and social skills are affected then the child is said to display autistic behavior. In this the child displays repetitive behavioral patterns. Autism is also known as persuasive developmental disorder. There are a number of reasons why autistic children have difficulties with behavior. The root cause of difficult behavior is facing fundamental difficulties with social interaction and communication. Autistic children also have problems in communication. These are as follows: 1. Two – way communication process. These people find it difficult to express their language to others. 2. They also have problems in receptive language. In other words, these people cannot understand what others say to them. 3. These people also have problems understanding non – verbal communication like body language and facial expressions An autistic child also has problems in dealing with social situations due to the problems faced in communication. Social situations may be extremely stressful and demanding for these children as they find it difficult to communicate with other people. Such people may not even understand the general social rules that govern the social situation. For example, they may not understand how close one needs to stand in front of another person in order to communicate. Children may find it extremely daunting especially if they are in an unfamiliar or new situation. There may be some who may avoid contact with others due to these difficulties. Participant description: A thirteen year old autistic boy is having problems in behavior and learning. He is currently working on P levels in autism. He exhibits tantrums, screams, mouths objects, non – compliance, grinds his teeth, rocks, throws objects, spits and bolts. His tantrums usually last for about 20 – 30 minutes and repeats this at least 4 – 5 times a day. The thirteen year old scored a rating of 49 on the Childhood Autism Rating Scale which puts him in the severely autistic range. This boy was sent to a special school wherein he learnt the functional use of five American Sign Language signs. However he did not learn any other communication skills including gestures. The Children Act and its aims: The Children Act 2004 (the Act) provides the legislative spine on which Every Child Matters. It aims to promote early intervention, integrate and improve childrens services, provide strong leadership and bring together different professionals in multi-disciplinary teams in order achieve positive outcomes for children and young people and their families. Five key outcomes for children and young people are emphasized in the Act and Change programme. The act aims to attain, being healthy, staying safe, enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution and achieving economic well-being. (Surrey County Council, 2011). Behavioral and communication strategies: For autistic children and adolescents IQ and speech level is not questioned. However, many studies suggest that outcomes can be affected by intervention. Intensive behavioral intervention program is very effective in getting better results out of autistic people. An important component of prognosis is the type of intervention used for achieving desirable outcomes. The intervention also depends on the clinical traits and attributes of an autistic child and the best outcomes are derived from children having high cognitive levels. Intervention is administered via multidisciplinary, comprehensive approaches that may include speech therapy, psychotherapy, educational sessions and psychomotor rehabilitation. Approaches are eclectic and vary considerably across individuals. Speech levels and autism severity are widely acknowledged as two of the prognosis factors irrespective of the methodology used. A predictive factor of outcomes is the presence or absence of speech in an autistic child. Higher level of autism is also responsible for negative outcomes (Darrou, Pry, Permon, Michelon, Aussilloux & Baghdadli, 2010). It has been observed that around fifty percent of autistic individuals lack language development sufficient to meet daily activities. Nowadays, visual based communication strategies are being explored as a medium to develop communication skills in autistic children in classrooms, at home and at vocational environments. These communication strategies are used to provide comprehensive language input and to improve expressive language for autistic individuals. Intervention conditions: Let us find out what strategies can be implemented in the case of this thirteen year old boy. First of all, he needs to be put into a public school program which caters to autistic children. The intervention for this type of autistic adolescent needs to be implemented by the classroom teacher within the normal community and school, special education instructional assistant and speech therapist. Natural aided language was used as a means of intervention to teach this autistic child to communicate. This was used by means of activity specific language boards which employed picture symbol boards within the student’s mainstream and classroom environment. The boy needs to be engaged in contextually appropriate simple conversations while touching key symbols on the communication boards. The boy’s attempts to communicate (sign, picture and gestures) should be acknowledged by communication partners through the below mentioned techniques: 1. Expanding communication by repeating communicative unit on the language board including additional picture communication symbols (PCS). 2. Model the communication unit by touching correspondence picture communication symbol on the communication board 3. Shape the communication system by completing or correcting the communication unit generated by the thirteen year old boy. The staff also has to be educated about the application of specific language simulation techniques to use the communication board. Natural aided language comprising of an environmentally specific language board interactively, generatively and conversationally. Natural aided language as a receptive language training needs to be employed in this case by practitioners with the expectation that one day the boy would be able to expressively communicate. Language boards: Language boards need to be employed in order to teach communication to such students. Contextually appropriate vocabulary so arranged that it facilitated the locating of words easy for communication. This needs to mirror the arrangement of language in the English conversation. Sentence subjects needs to be present in the extreme left followed by verbs and then objects. Vocabulary for the language needs to be generated after carefully observing the participant and make a note as to why type of vocabulary will best suit him. Communication data collection: Based on the response, initiation, questions and comments provided by the participant by using the picture communication symbols communicative data needs to be collected using the duplicate language method board. Duplicate language boards placed on clipboards needs to be placed at convenient locations in the classroom. If the participant points to a symbol or symbols in a contextually appropriate manner the classroom staff needs to record that date within the cell of each particular picture sign. On the other hand if the participant correctly responds to the questions asked by the staff by pointing to a picture then again the staff needs to record this. This is the way data collection for communication needs to be gathered. Description of communicative behaviors: Natural aided language is the only type of communication measures for severely autistic children. Such initiations were chosen for two main reasons. First, multiple kinds of communication like responding, modeling and initiating needs to be tallied and second, initiation behaviors seemed to be more frequent, easy to code and identify and more important in defining viable interactive behaviors. A communication initiation is described when the participant independently approaches a staff member with the communication board and points out to desired signs or a chain or signs which represent his comments or requests. The communication initiative would be considered to be successful if the response of the staff member was desirable for the participant. Ancillary outcomes of nature aided language, academics and behavior: Academic baseline conditions within a thirteen year old adolscent’s special education classroom environment should consist of verbally based instructional protocols and verbal cues for behavioral cueing. An autistic child’s instructional program should be adjusted to include more and more arithmetic reading, complex learning protocols and mathematical reading. This of course depends whether the boy uses his cognitive skills to respond to these situations. Behavioral baseline conditions and collection of data: The bolting behaviour of the thirteen year old boy severely put hindrances in his path to accomplish a task on time and his availability for instruction. Out – of – seat or bolting behavior was defined as getting up from the seat of instruction without direction or permission. This behaviour of the thirteen year old boy needs to be recorded on a daily basis. A way to curb this behaviour is to reinforce the child with something when he completes a task in time. Initially if the person remains on seat for 30 seconds then he should be reinforced and eventually the reinforcement should be done for longer periods of time, say about 5 minutes. Nature aided language as a tool to help autistic children and adolescents believes in providing dramatically enhanced verbal and visual communicative input to an autistic child. This input however needs behavioral cues like ‘time to sit’ or ‘please be quiet’. An informal tally of the behavior of the participant suggested that before using the process of expanded vocabulary board language and natural aided language the mean daily occurrences of tantrums by the participant was four per day. However, by introducing natural aided language as a means of intervention, the mean daily tantrums decreased to two per day. Findings of the nature based intervention: The case of the thirteen year old adolescent throws light into certain augementative issues in communication for autistic students. Let us find what these issues are: 1. Nature based intervention demonstrates the power of nature aided languages. This type of intervention assumes that an autistic student who uses a rich vocabulary can with the passage of time learn to understand the vocabulary used. 2. One can use nature based intervention by mixing both text and icons, with icons only or with text only. 3. By employing Boardmarker, text can be included in conjuction with the icon in dark, large print. This helps to signify the important of text for emergent literacy development. 4. If a student displays limited language processing it may be due to limited usage of visual language. The language boards used have limited choices, then the student will have little or no access to build in opportunities for initiation, commenting or requesting topics other than those included in the choices. 5. Nature based intervention also points to the fact that behavioral lack of simulation may trigger behavioral difficulties in autistic children. 6. The first step in designing an effective learning environment for such individuals is by altering the learning environment by changing the communicative input as a global change in the environmental antecedents. 7. Finally autistic individuals must have communication systems not only as a means to boost positive behavior but also as a basic human right. It can be concluded that the behavioral improvements that has been displayed by a thirteen year old adolescent is due to the interventions that have been provided with the aid of visual and text communication devices. Reinforcement has also played an important part in the positive behavior outcomes of the patient. However, this type of nature aided intervention to autism also has its set of limitations. This model demands replication through single subject, multiple baseline design. The effect of nature aided intervention on aberrant behavior needs a lot of research which takes into consideration language interventions and clearly defined behavioral descriptions. This also must include the effect of visual negotiation on compliance and behavior. (Cafiero, 2001). References: Surrey County Council, 2011, “The Chidlren Act and Every Child Matters Change for Children Programme”. Retrieved on June 03, 2011 from http://www.surreycc.gov.uk/sccwebsite/sccwspages.nsf/LookupWebPagesByTITLE_RTF/The+Children+Act+and+Every+Child+Matters+Change+for+Children+Programme?opendocument# Darrou, C., Pry, R., Permon, E., Michelon, C., Aussilloux, C. & Baghdadli, A., 2010, ‘Outcome of young children with autism: does the amount of intervention influence developmental trajectories?, Autism, vol. 14, no. 6, pp. 663 – 677. Cafiero, J.M., 2001, ‘The effect of an augmentative communication intervention on the communication, behavior and academic program of an adolescent with autism, Focus on autism and other developmental disabilities, vol. 16, no.3. Read More