Self-injurious Behavior of young children has demanded immediate intervention because it can give young children difficulties of social-relationship development and acquisition of learning skills, and moreover, in case of leaving it, it may create a s...
Self-injurious Behavior of young children has demanded immediate intervention because it can give young children difficulties of social-relationship development and acquisition of learning skills, and moreover, in case of leaving it, it may create a serious danger to their life as well as their physical function. Recently Self-injurious Behavior is recognized as adaptive behavior with the function to accomplish their goals which autistic children want.
Significant teaching approach for Self-injurious Behavior needs intervention which teach appropriate alternative communication behavior in order to define the intention of self-injurious behavior and approach the purpose by using more acceptable method.
In this point of view, because teachers can notice the intention of self-injurious behavior and teach appropriate alternative behavior through Functional Communication Training by using function evaluation, the training can be regarded as effective intervention method to decrease Self-injurious Behavior and increase communication behavior.
Therefore, this study selected an autistic young child who has Self-injurios Behavior to execute Functional Communication Training and practiced Function evaluation in order to understand the intention of self-injurious behavior.
This study executed an interview with parents of an autistic child and teacher, and a direct observation through three fields of daily life environment at a nursery as the function evaluation methods. As a result of the function evaluation, this study has found that young child did self-injurious behavior in order to demand his favorite things and avoid his learning tasks.
In order to improve function that was revealed through function evaluation, this research executed communication training and tried to investigate how effect is given to self-injurious behavior and communication behavior.
The intervention was executed by passing through baseline, intervention and maintenance as Using 'Multiple Baseline across Setting' for an experiment design. Intervention took total 25 minutes, and observed the effect of the previous day's training for 10minutes and then progressed Functional Communication Training for 15 minutes. Intervention was progressed during 11-23 sessions in each situation. this research was based on partial interval recording method and at 2weeks after completion of the intervention, maintenance test was progressed during 6sessions in each situation.
The results of this study are as the followings.
First, Self-injurious Behavior of a young child on the function evaluation was working as demand-functional behaviors for favorite things or food and avoidance/refusal-functional behaviors for completing new tasks or hard tasks.
Second, Self-injurious Behavior was decreased and communicative behavior was increased through alternative communication training that is appropriate to the revealed behavior.
Third, the self-injurious behavior ratio of demand and avoidance-function in three fields of daily life environment at a nursery was decreased in intervention session compared with baseline session, on the other hand, communication behavior was increased. Self-injurious behavior appeared the highest rate on the baseline session of learning activity's task suggestion/accomplishment demand condition and the decrease rate of self-injurious behavior on the intervention session was smaller than that on the baseline session. Functional Communication Training has an effect on the decreased self-injurious behavior ratio and the increased communication behavior ratio during the maintenance session although time passed.
In conclusion, the function evaluation method was very useful way to analyze that Self-injurious Behavior of a young child was intended things. Functional Communication Training had an affirmative effect on reducing Self-injurious Behavior and increasing Communicative Behavior through the acquisition of Functional Communicative Behavior.