Intervention Design Process
Designing Effective Interventions
First you need to choose what behavior needs the
intervention. It may not necessarily be the strongest behavior.
Is it likely you will be able to treat it – if so, this may
make it your target behavior.
12 things to consider when choosing a behavior for
intervention
- Health, impairment, etc.
- Are there any physically dangerous behaviors going on.
- Evaluate the presence of any kinds of syndromes
(constellation of behaviours that have been defined to produce a
categorical label. Ex. ADHD, Turret’s, etc.)
- Evaluate the socio and economic impact of these behaviours
on the caregivers.
- Consider the values, goals, and beliefs of the caregivers
and teachers (goes with the idea of “acceptability of treatment options”
- if they don’t find it acceptable, they won’t institute it)
- Think about expanding the positive behaviours so they
generalize to other situations and settings.
- Help the coping of the teachers and the caregiver as part
of the intervention goal. Choose a behavior that is causing stress – this
will make them grateful, and more likely to work in the future
- Plan for sequences of behaviour change – esp. if you are
doing developmental consultation. One may be a prerequisite for others
- Choose a keystone behaviour (a behaviour on which all
others appear to depend – compliance may be a good example: IE, a child
with conduct disorder behaviours)
- Consider the social competence of the child.
- Plan for the next educational environment.
- Consider using the technique called “template matching”
Template matching is most often used for students who are in segregated
settings, such as for special education students, in order to prepare them
to go into integrated settings. In this, you are going to identify the
behaviours of successful individuals in the new setting (say,
Kindergarten) they will be moving to and then determine how much that
child actually performs that behaviour currently in their current setting
(let’s say, preschool), look for the discrepancy, and develop a template
or an example of the way you expect the child to act, based on the
behaviour required in the new setting.
Intervention Decisions: When you make intervention
decisions, you are going to look at intervening in four domains:
- Changes in behaviours of any of the critical people (the
child, the parents, teachers, etc)
- The physical environment. (Ex. Maybe the use of a study
carrel is all it takes)
- Instruction. (How are we instructing new skill development
or expanding skill development?) – Is the issue that the student doesn’t
have the skill in the first place?
- Implement some techniques for increasing self-regulation.
What will it take to get them to perform what they actually know.
How to choose interventions:
- Look at the research base.
- Look at what resources are available to support the
intervention.
- Look at the acceptability of the intervention to those who
will be implementing it.
- Consider the motivation of the person who will be
implementing the intervention.
- Estimate the probable success of the intervention and the
cost effectiveness.
- Determine whether to use “other directed” or
“self-mediated” change technique.
- Other directed would be the teacher is responsible for
keeping the child on task
- In Self-mediated, the child is responsible for recording
if he/she did or did not do the right thing, which will be turned in to
the teacher for a reward at the end.
After deciding on an intervention, what do we do?
- Look at what role and responsibilities each person has.
- Develop some sort of script to make sure the intervention
is implemented with integrity.
- Look for unintended outcomes or side effects. (will
stopping one behaviour start another?)
- Make sure you have a system for monitoring (prob. similar
to the baseline data gathering system)
- Make any kind of changes the data indicate need to be
changed. If you’ve given it enough time and it is not working, changes
need to be made.
- Plan for generalization.
Managing severe behaviour problems in terms of problem
solving analyses.
Differential reinforcement: You reinforce depending on
criteria.
- DRA (Differential Reinforcement of Alternative Behaviour)
– a situation in which a more acceptable behaviour is substituted for
maladaptive behaviour and occurrences are reinforced. (Ex. A child causes
disruptions in class when he has nothing to do, so you will give him
something to do and reinforce his lack of disruptive behaviours when he is
doing something.)
- DRI (Differential Reinforcement of Incompatible
Behaviours) – Reinforcement is given to the child if he or she performs a
desirable behaviour opposite of the one that you are trying to get rid of.
(Ex. A child cannot be attending and be off task at the same time. A
child can not be isolated and engaged in peer play at the same time.)
- DRF (Differential Reinforcement of Functional Behaviour) –
based on the functional analysis of behaviour. A new behaviour that serves
the same function as the old behaviour is reinforced. (Ex. A student who
screams to ask for help is taught a signal to use to ask for help. A
student who wants attention by yelling out in class will be taught to
raise his hand)
These functional behaviours must be taught, and must be
common to the environment. They must fit right in. It is important that if you
teach these new behaviours, they are more effective at gaining what they want
to get than the old behaviours. (make sure the teacher sees the signal, because
she will hear the scream)
- DRO (Differential Reinforcement of Other Behaviour) –
Reinforcement is given for anything except the target behaviour. Often
used for self-injurious behaviours or highly aggressive behaviours.
- DRL (Differential Reinforcement of Low Rates of Behaviour)
– used to eliminate (or at least bring down to very low rates) very
frequent behaviours. Set a target, if the student reaches that target, a
reward is given.
Aversive procedures and punishment.
LAST RESORT! Used after positive interventions have been
used, exhausted, and have proven unproductive.
- Time Out: The time out has to be when a student is
prevented from getting positive reinforcement for brief periods of time,
contingent on maladaptive behaviour. If a student does not find the
classroom positive – time out is a reward. Planned ignoring can be an
example of time out if a student finds attention as positive. Time out is
the removal of the positive reinforcement.
- Contingent Observation: A strategy you use in different
play routines which involves incidental teaching by the teacher and mild
time out from active participation from the play activity when the child
doesn’t do the right thing.
- Response Cost: Used to decrease inappropriate behaviours.
Less directive than Contingent Observation. The teacher is not as involved
in the activity itself, she just removes the positive reinforcer.
- Overcorrection: Involves using two procedures, either
separately or in combination.
- Restitution: The student pays back for what he has done
(picks up what he threw, etc.)
- Positive Practice: Modeling the appropriate skill.
In order to use this, you need to
analyze the situation and look for ways to incorporate the teaching piece of it
into the environment and look for ideas for natural consequences. This
technique is often used for students who do a lot of self-stimulation,
self-injury, aggression and disruptive behaviours for severely disabled
students, but it can be used for a wide range of situations.
Conditions which must be met to use
overcorrection:
·
The conditional task must be similar or related to the
maladaptive task.
·
The overcorrection should occur immediately following the
behaviour (if the child is calm).
·
The duration of the overcorrection should be longer than the
original problem situation.
·
The child should be actively engaged in the positive practice.
(Physically engaged in demonstrating the correct behaviour)
·
The appropriate alternative behaviour should be reinforced when
not applying overcorrection. (Don’t give reinforcement during the training part
of overcorrection, but after, when the child is doing the positive behaviour on
his own)
Self-Mediated Intervention Techniques.
Self-regulation is considered a keystone behaviour.
It involves self-observation or monitoring, judgmental processes concerning
your own performance, and self-reactions. Some say that young children are not
capable, but there are benefits, even for kids:
- Kids may see something the parents/ teacher will miss.
- The observer becomes the cue for doing the correct
behaviour.
- In terms of practical benefits, it gives the caregiver
additional time to do other things.
- The goal of the intervention is often self control anyway.
Self observation is obviously a step in self-control.
How will we know if a child will be able to use this?
- A child must be able to recognize and observe his or her
own behaviour
- Rule learning must occur or have occurred with the child
regarding what is or is not appropriate in various situations, along with
an understanding of the consequences of behaviour.
- A child must have the appropriate skills to do the task.
As a school psych, we must find out if the child is choosing to not do the
task, or can not do the task.
- A child needs to be taught to evaluate his or her own
behaviour, and to compare it with standards.
- The child is taught to self-record and self-reward.
- Self regulation may be used in combination with other
interventions, including public goal setting.
Correspondence training: Involves developing a
relationship between the child’s verbal account of his/her behaviour and the
actual behaviour. Also called Promise Keeping.
The focus of correspondence training is on verbalizations
which are used to mediate behaviours. However, this procedure has also been
used with young language delayed children. Language is generally a well
developed skill that children have at a young age and may assist in controlling
the behaviour. Language can be used across different environments, so it
generalizes. Language is a convenient tool and requires little effort
Filed under: EDC 510-511 Consultation in Schools and Practicum
Copyright: October, 2003 - David Profitt
