Antecedent Based Strategies and their Efficacy

Antecedent Based Strategies

  • Module 7 discusses antecedent-based strategies, focusing on motivating operations to reduce aberrant behavior.
  • These strategies manipulate the value of consequences, affecting reinforcing or punishing stimuli.

Strategies for Decreasing Aberrant Behavior

  • Many antecedent-based strategies can be used, with varying degrees of effectiveness, for individuals with autism.
  • Some strategies teach replacement skills, with numerous teaching methods available.
  • Other strategies are "Band-Aids," manipulating the environment for success without teaching coping skills or functional alternatives.
  • Some strategies should be avoided altogether, despite some behavior analysts advocating for their use, because they don't foster long-term skill development.

Behavioral Momentum

  • Behavioral momentum involves engaging the student in a highly preferred task or high-probability response.
  • This builds momentum for appropriate behavior, which is then reinforced.
  • It can be used proactively, to introduce a harder task or a task that invokes problem behavior, or reactively, to regain behavioral control.
  • The goal is to increase the likelihood of a low-probability task or demand being completed by providing more reinforcement.

Example

  • Proactively, if a student is likely to resist cleaning up, start with activities they enjoy and reinforce them (e.g., eating a cookie, giving a high five).
  • Then, introduce the low-probability task (cleaning up), making them more likely to comply.
  • Reactively, if a student is tantruming, ask them to do simple tasks like giving a high five or touching their nose, and reinforce compliance.
  • This builds compliance before addressing more difficult tasks, such as sitting up.

Misuse of Behavioral Momentum

  • Behavioral momentum is often misused in rigid ways, such as repeatedly doing simple tasks before introducing a novel trial.
  • This can lead to sloppy responding, inattentiveness, stereotypic behavior, noncompliance, and aggression.
  • Behavioral momentum should be combined with other procedures like discrete trial teaching, shaping, incidental teaching, teaching interaction procedure, BST, cool knock, social skills group, and embedded instructions.
  • Using behavioral momentum alone is a Band-Aid approach, failing to teach appropriate social behavior or functional alternatives, thus only solving the problem in the short term.

Reducing Task Difficulty

  • This involves reducing the time and effort required for a student to engage in tasks.
  • For example, if a student struggles with a 15-minute exercise, reduce it to 10 minutes.
  • Or change from double-digit math facts to single-digit math facts (e.g., from 26+3226 + 32 to 6+26 + 2).
  • This decreases the likelihood of aberrant behavior and increases the likelihood of functional behavior.

Proactive vs. Reactive

  • It should be done both proactively and reactively.
  • Proactively, adjust task difficulty based on the student's current state (e.g., antenna influence, health problems).
  • Reactively, be cautious to avoid reinforcing aberrant behavior by making tasks easier when they misbehave. This might be necessary to prevent escape or running away.

Providing Choice and Redirection

  • Allowing the child to choose tasks (e.g., math or reading) can be very powerful, as children like having control over their environment.
  • However, teach that it cannot always be the student's choice.
  • Redirection involves interrupting an unwanted behavior and redirecting it to another activity.

Response Interruption

  • If a student is scripting, interrupt it by asking a question like, "What did you have for dinner?" and then redirect them into another activity.
  • Be careful, as this can start a weird chain of behavior if not caught early.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

  • The lecturer categorizes the success rate of different manipulations differently.

The Good

Highly Enriching Environment
  • Creating an environment with many opportunities for reinforcement is excellent.

The Good but Not Great

Activity Schedules
  • Activity schedules are visual displays showing the child's plan.
  • They provide predictability in an otherwise chaotic world and are usually kept on the student's desk or carried with them.
  • The key to success is involving the student in creating the schedule and providing choices within the schedule for best outcomes.
  • The lecturer states that activity schedules should constantly be changing and working on improving the learner's flexibility.
  • A problem with activity schedules is that they can become rigid routines, making it difficult when changes occur.
Script Fading
  • Script fading involves using audiotapes, written words, phrases, or sentences to teach conversation and social behavior.
  • The child knows to say a certain script such as "Will you play with me?" and the script should systematically fade over time.
  • It is an evidence-based procedure and often goes hand in hand with activity schedules, especially for more impacted learners.
  • It teaches functional alternative responses and pro-social skills.
  • Usually involves three people: the student, the communication partner, and the prompter, who provides reinforcement and uses graduated guidance.
Conversation Partner
  • Should be inviting and enthusiastic, conditioning themselves as a social reinforcer.
  • They should create a good language environment with natural conversations and model appropriate conversation nuances.
  • They need to have powerful rewards when the student asks them for something.
Additional Tips for Script Fading:
  • Use good scripts with power words individualized to the student's needs and understandable language.
  • Use different carrier phrases and ensure they are age-appropriate.
  • When fading, go from last word/activity to the next until there are no more scripts.
  • The biggest problem is when we don't fade, creating rigid and robotic language. If this occurs, more natural and flexible scripts should be used.
Video Modeling
  • Video modeling involves a person or the child modeling the desired social behavior via a video.
  • Basic video modeling: another person demonstrates the behavior.
  • Self-video modeling: the learner displays the appropriate behavior and watches a video of themself.
  • POV video modeling: the camera acts as the learner, watching the environment from their perspective.
  • Video prompting: breaking down a skill into discrete steps for the student to watch.
Considerations
  • Return to the target skill and pre-observe the student's behavior to determine the type of video model to use (adult, peer, known/unknown, student, POV).
  • Train the model, make and edit the video, take baseline data, and implement the intervention.
  • Ways to promote generalization and maintenance through multiple videos, multiple points of view and have them role play.
  • Following role play, provide reinforcement for correct behavior and have a systematic fading plan.
  • Creating videos has become easier with phones, tablets, and computers, allowing for quick and nimble implementation and high levels of student success.

The Bad

First Then Strategies
  • First/then strategies involve telling a student “First you do this, then you get this.”
  • They allow students to know the sequence of events and can include choices to increase flexibility.
  • However, it's "bribery land" because it could lead to negotiations to change the behavior.

The Ugly

Social Stories/Social Narratives
  • Social stories are a systematic form of intervention, with brief text describing a social behavior created by Gray and Garland in 1993.
  • This information regards: when, where, why, and what behaviors the child should engage in.
  • Some research shows social stories can be implemented to behaviors that are not inherently social in nature, while others are inherently social behaviors such as appreciation, smiling peer interaction
Guidelines
  • The learner must be in the trainable mentally impaired range or higher and have basic language skills to understand the story.
  • The social story should be individualized and tailored for the child's needs.
  • Need to use descriptive, prescriptive, affirmative, and directive sentences in the correct ratio.
  • The social story should be written in first person and can only be implemented by sitting side-by-side.
Ever Changing Guidelines
  • The different sentence types include descriptive, prescriptive, and directive. With controller and partial being eventually added.
  • The ratios have also changed: In '93, there was no guideline. In '94, there was optional ratio. Then in '95, and '98 changed to be an optional and then required respectively.
  • Guidelines have changed regarding illustrations over the year with no reason or empirical data to support it.
  • Given all of these changing guidelines, I don't even know what people mean when they say they're doing a social story.
  • According to the lecturer, an example situation of using a social story during counseling would not be suitable because they would "be thrown out."
Evidence
  • The evidence doesn't support its use, and this is important to acknowledge as an RBT.
  • The lecturer and students compared social stories versus the teaching interaction procedure looking for which would be more effective in teaching social behavior to six children diagnosed with autism.
  • It was found that the teaching interaction procedure was far more effective.
  • A generalization issue with none adults as a higher level of generality, which is appropriate because if you're not learning with social stories you're not generalizing.
  • An additional follow-up study was done with a group setting comparing social stories as well as control sessions.
  • It was stated social stories did not do anything and teaching an actual procedure was far more effective.
  • An additional study was done looking at cool versus not cool procedure as an intervention and comparing it to social stories.
  • It was found that the social stories were not effective and not cool versus cool procedure was far more effective.
Literature Review
  • According to ten reviews, the literature review states that social stories are not beneficial and should not be used, with a large percentage showing no convincing value.
  • All in all results showed no functional relationships, not as effective as comparative studies and no additive value.
  • In summary for you technicians please elect to implement something else, because is doing so will have a bigger impact for your students.