BA440 Unit 6 Function-Based Intervention Paper Example

"Swing, Please" and the Hard Part After It: A BA440 Unit 6 Function-Based Intervention Paper

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

BA440: Behavior Intervention

Unit 6 Function-Based Intervention Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The writer, the agency, the family and every figure are composite and illustrative; the articles cited are real.

Ava and the Swing

Ava is seven, has autism and uses few words. She lives with her parents and two older brothers in a house with a backyard swing set, which is her favorite thing in the world. When she cannot reach the swing, or when it is time to come in, she cries, drops to the ground and sometimes hits whoever is nearest. As her registered behavior technician, I work with her four afternoons a week at home.

My supervising behavior analyst's assessment found that Ava's crying and hitting were maintained by access to tangible items, mostly the swing, her tablet and apple juice. When an adult gave her the item, the behavior stopped. That finding set the direction of the intervention: teach Ava a better way to get those items.

Functional Communication Training

Tiger et al. (2008) described functional communication training as giving a learner a way to communicate that earns the same reinforcer problem behavior used to earn. Their practical guide recommends choosing a response the learner can make with little effort and that any listener will understand, prompting it at first and fading prompts quickly, reinforcing it every time during early training, and arranging for problem behavior no longer to produce the reinforcer.

For Ava, the team chose a simple sign for "swing," a hand rocking back and forth, plus picture cards for juice and tablet on a strip by the back door. Signs suited her well; she imitated gestures readily, and her brothers learned the swing sign in a day. I prompted the sign by modeling it whenever she reached toward the swing or began to fuss, and gave access to the swing immediately after she signed, even with help. Within ten days she signed independently most times, and crying and hitting at the back door dropped from about eight episodes per afternoon to two.

Why Extinction Was Included

Hagopian et al. (1998) summarized outcomes for twenty-one inpatients with severe problem behavior treated with functional communication training. Training without extinction rarely reduced problem behavior to clinically acceptable levels, while training combined with extinction was effective in a much larger share of cases. When problem behavior still produced the reinforcer, there was little reason for it to stop.

Ava's plan therefore included extinction: crying and hitting no longer produced the swing. If she cried, I waited for a calm moment, prompted the sign and then gave access. Her parents found this hard on the first days, because giving her the swing had always ended the crying quickly. We practiced the sequence together until they could do it without me.

The sign worked because crying stopped working; neither change would have done much alone.

The Problem With "Always"

Functional communication training creates a new problem: in early training, the request is honored every time, but in real life the swing is not always available. It rains, it is dinner time, a brother is using it. When the first "not now" came, Ava signed, signed again, then cried and hit, the old behavior returning when the new one stopped working.

Ghaemmaghami et al. (2016) studied how to build tolerance for delays and denials after functional communication training. They compared delays that simply passed with time against delays in which the child had to engage in an appropriate behavior, such as completing a brief task, before the reinforcer was delivered. Delays with that contingency promoted tolerance more effectively, with problem behavior staying low as delays grew longer.

Teaching "Wait"

Following that approach, we taught Ava to tolerate delays in steps. When she signed for the swing, I said "wait" with a picture card and gave her a small job, such as putting three blocks in a bin, before she went out. At first the wait was five seconds and the job one block. Over three weeks, waits grew to two minutes, with jobs such as helping set the table. If she cried during the wait, the wait started over once she was calm, so crying never shortened it.

We also taught her to accept a "no, swing later" card paired with an alternative she liked, such as her tablet, for times when the swing truly was not available.

Extending the Requests

Once the swing sign was reliable, the team added requests for the other items her assessment had identified. Ava learned to hand over the juice card and the tablet card within another two weeks, faster than the first sign, perhaps because she had learned that requests work. Each new request was taught the same way, with immediate access at first and waits added later. My supervisor kept the number of requests small on purpose. Teaching ten signs at once might have confused the adults more than Ava, and three well-honored requests covered most of the moments when crying and hitting had occurred. The next unit's language program builds on these first requests.

Results

After six weeks, Ava signed for the swing on most occasions and waited up to two minutes without problem behavior on most trials. Crying and hitting averaged under one episode per afternoon, compared with eight in baseline. Her parents reported fewer episodes on weekends, when I was not there, though rain days remained hard and long car rides still produced some crying.

Family Considerations

Ava's family speaks English at home, but her grandmother, who visits often, speaks mostly Vietnamese. The team chose a sign rather than a spoken word partly so that her grandmother could recognize and honor it without language barriers. Her brothers became valuable partners; they now ask Ava to sign before pushing her on the swing.

Limits

The plan relies on adults honoring the sign and enforcing waits consistently, and integrity data showed lapses on busy evenings. Rain days, when the swing is unavailable for long periods, will need a more developed plan, perhaps an indoor swing or a schedule showing when outside time will come. Generalization to the school playground has not yet been tested.

Conclusion

Ava's crying and hitting were maintained by access to the swing and other items. Functional communication training, designed following Tiger and colleagues and combined with extinction as Hagopian and colleagues' findings recommend, taught her to sign for the swing. Delay tolerance built with contingencies, following Ghaemmaghami and colleagues, taught her to wait, and problem behavior fell sharply.

References

Ghaemmaghami, M., Hanley, G. P., & Jessel, J. (2016). Contingencies promote delay tolerance. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 49(3), 548-575. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaba.333

Hagopian, L. P., Fisher, W. W., Sullivan, M. T., Acquisto, J., & LeBlanc, L. A. (1998). Effectiveness of functional communication training with and without extinction and punishment: A summary of 21 inpatient cases. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 31(2), 211-235. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1998.31-211

Tiger, J. H., Hanley, G. P., & Bruzek, J. (2008). Functional communication training: A review and practical guide. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 1(1), 16-23. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03391716