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V. Mark Durand, Project Director
Christie Tanner,
Project Coordinator “If only he could
talk!” Michael’s mother said as she expressed her helplessness over
her son’s apparent frustration. Michael, who is deaf-blind, was screaming
and biting his hand while his teacher tried to get him to participate in some
schoolwork. “If only he could just tell us what he wants, what’s
bothering him!” There was no blaming here, only a feeling that Michael
held the secret to satisfying his own needs—if only we could get inside
his head and crack the code.
Our project is designed to “get inside” Michael’s
head, as well as the heads of 23 other students with deaf-blindness to
determine why they exhibit problem behaviors such as aggression, self-injury,
and tantrums. Once we determine why the students are displaying problem
behavior, we attempt to teach them another way of telling us what they want,
using vocal output communication aides (VOCAs) in an approach we call
“functional communication training.” Finally, the third stage of our
project is to assess whether our efforts at teaching these students specific
communication strategies in school might be effective outside the school
environment.
Finding Out Why Behavior Problems Occur It is now widely
agreed that treatment efforts for behavior problems should be based on the
reasons why the student is misbehaving. In fact, the Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) now requires such assessments (functional
behavioral assessments) for all students with significant behavior problems.
Unfortunately, despite this widespread agreement to look at why our students
misbehave as the basis for any program, many professionals continue to make
such assessments in informal ways, such as through conversations with teachers
and parents and brief informal observations of the student. We always begin
with informal observations of and interviews with significant others, but we
continue the process using multiple forms of assessment, including the
Motivation Assessment Scale (MAS)** and structured observations in the
student’s classroom. The MAS is a questionnaire that we can give to
teachers, paraprofessionals, family members, or anyone else who has a great
deal of contact with the student. The MAS asks questions about where, when, and
under what conditions problem behaviors occur and determines their motivations.
Information from the MAS, along with other forms of functional behavioral
assessments is used to design plans for reducing the behavior problems.
Michael’s assessments suggested that his screaming and hand biting
occurred more often when demands were placed on him. This told us that he might
be acting this way because his behavior sometimes got him out of tasks in his
class. His teacher might end work earlier than usual if he got upset. This
taught him to get upset when he did not like the work. Clearly, this
information was very important to us in designing a plan for reducing his
behavior problems.
**Information about the Motivation Assessment Scale is
available from the publisher; Monaco and Associates, Inc., 4125 Gage Center
Drive, Suite 204, Topeka, KS 66604 (800) 798-1309, (785) 272-5501,
(785)-272-5152 (fax); http://www.monacoassociates.com/products
Functional Behavioral Assessment Hints Conduct two or
more different functional behavioral assessments for a student’s behavior
problems. This will increase your confidence that you have picked the right
reasons the problems are occurring. Conduct these assessments in all settings
where you expect to begin a program. Be aware that behaviors can occur in
different settings for different reasons. Sometimes knowing what can make a
student well-behaved (e.g., sitting next to the teacher) can tell you why the
student is misbehaving (e.g., to get teacher attention). Behaviors that appear
to occur for sensory reasons (e.g., repetitive behaviors) can over time be used
by a student for social reasons (e.g., to avoid demands).
Using the Assessment to Design a Plan There are many
different ways to reduce behavior problems. For example, with Michael we could
have simply stopped giving him any challenging class work. We knew from our
assessments that making these changes in the classroom would have stopped
almost all of his outbursts. But where would this have left him? Obviously,
almost all educational goals would have been thwarted. Rather than remove the
situations that seem to set off behavior problems, we try to teach the student
how to handle these situations. Therefore, at the heart of our efforts to
reduce behavior problems is the approach that teaches students other ways to
tell us what they want—“functional communication training.” As
we saw before, our functional behavioral assessments indicated that
Michael’s screaming and hand biting were most likely efforts to escape
work. Our solution was to teach him to use a vocal output communication aide
(VOCA) to ask his teacher for help when the work was too difficult.
We taught Michael to communicate using his VOCA in much the same
way we teach the other students in the project. Since we begin by placing the
student in the situation that seems to be causing difficulties, we began by
having Michael work on difficult tasks. Before he had time to get upset, we
would take his hand and help him press the VOCA, which was programmed to say
“Help me!” We then gave him some assistance on the task to make it
easier for him. Although he could not hear the voice output, it soon became
clear to him if he pressed the button on the device, the task became easier for
him. After a few weeks during which time we reduced the amount of help we gave
him, he began to use the device with no help each time tasks became too
difficult. And, when this happened, his behavior problems were reduced
significantly. Although students progress at different rates, if we pick the
right situation to begin teaching based on our functional behavioral assessment
we are often very successful in teaching students to ask for what they want.
Their problem behaviors are in turn reduced.
Reducing Behavior Problems Hints
- Always include strategies for teaching more appropriate
skills in any plan to reduce behavior problems.
- Do not rely simply on avoiding situations that lead to
problem behavior.
- Be sure the communicative efforts of the student are
understandable to others.
Moving Out into the Community One of the biggest
challenges to designing a plan to reduce behavior problems is to create a
program that will work outside special settings and with untrained persons. We
need plans that will not only work with specially trained teachers and family
members at school and at home, but also with the cashier at fast food
restaurants, a bus driver, or the stranger on the street. To be successful in
the community means that we cannot simply rely on avoiding problem situations;
instead, we must teach our students how to adjust and respond to settings that
are often unpredictable.
The functional communication training we just described is an
ideal way to help students adapt to the community. Thus, our project extends
the work in the classroom by taking the students out into their community where
we identify situations that may cause them to become upset and then teach them
to ask for what they might want. Because the VOCAs can be programmed to clearly
communicate the students’ requests, they provide a good way to bridge the
communication gap between the child who is deaf-blind and the rest of the
world.
Reducing Behavior Problems with Functional Communication
Training is a three-year granted project from the U.S. Department of Education,
Office of Special Education Programs, Model Demonstration Projects in
Deafblindness, Grant Number H025D60008. The contents of this article do not
necessarily reflect the opinions of the U.S. Department of Education.
_________________
This article is a reprint from
Deaf-Blind Perspectives
Volume 6
Issue 3, Spring 1999
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