DEVELOPING ANTECEDENT AND CONSEQUENT-BASED INTERVENTION STRATEGIES TO PREVENT THE OCCURRENCE OF CHALLENGING BEHAVIORS IN A CHILD WITH AUTISM

Many children with autism spectrum disorder engage in challenging behaviors in order to escape from a demand or to have access to tangibles. Sometimes, they may engage in challenging behaviors because they have language delay or they do not have a functional communicative repertoire at all. The subject of this study is a 7-year old boy with autism spectrum disorder who based on the functional analysis engages in screaming and hitting when he wants to escape from a demand and when he wants to have access to tangibles. These challenging behaviors sometimes are followed by additional behaviors such as flopping and crying. The purpose of the study was to implement antecedent and consequent strategies in order to prevent the occurrence of these behaviors. The implementation of the intervention took place across 6 sessions. During the sessions, behavior therapist recorded the target behaviors, with tally counters, and at the end of the day the therapist recorded the total number of occurrence of these behaviors on the tracking sheet. The graphs showed a decrease of the occurrence in both challenging behaviors, but further time needed in order to determine the effectiveness of the intervention, as the goal is to decrease these behaviors to near zero levels