Behavior Analysis (teaching Students)

Background Information:

Arielle is a 4th grader at Roosevelt elementary school. She has attention deficit disorder and is currently being taken off her medication due to complication with it. Arielle is having trouble adjusting to life without the medication. She is being forced to control herself instead of relying medication to help her do so. She is having trouble controlling herself and has been in acting out in school with reprimand. The entire situation has been very stressful for her and her family.

she attends the eisnehower youth center The eisnehower Youth Center was recently transitioned from a youth center to an after school program for those parents that live in the Town of pearl or the Village of calem. It has an average to above average population, partly because of the economics of the program --50 dollars a month fee. This Youth Center is open when ever the kids are off school during the school year, including half days, school holidays, and snow days. There is a set schedule in place, from 3 pm Ð'- 4 pm that the attendants are helped with homework or do their own homework. The children have time to finish their homework and to color or read while the other children get their homework done. The time frame from 4 pm Ð'- 6pm the children break up into groups by age groups, there is a 4,5,6 year old group, a 7 year old group, and 8 year old group and a 9,10,11 year old group.

We begin to make contact with Arielle in the homework room. During this time Arielle has a difficulty keeping on task. This is not the behavior that I am attempting to impact. The behavior that I am trying to impact is Arielle's habit of yelling out during homework time. She does this in multiple different situations, sometimes trying to manipulate the situation, control the situation or in retaliation to doing work that she does not want to complete. There are a number of underlying reasons that she acts out like this, with both good and bad reasons. I am also her group leader, which gives me more time to observe her actions. This has given me a good understanding what the underlying causes for her outbursts are.

Scope of this Project:

The purpose of this project is to attempt to identify, or hypothesize, why Arielle acts out for a significannot

amount of time, both in good situations and in bad situations. I have used both the ABA collection method and the interval collection method. I did this for two weeks, from 3pm Ð'- 6pm every day. I will show all of the following in this project:

- The behavioral objective

- The rationale for changing behavior

- Data collection

- The current antecedents and antecedent control techniques

- The current consequences

- The hypothesis

Target Behavior:

The target behavior is to help Arielle express her self with out acting out during play, work and conflict.

Definition of On-task and Off-task Behavior:

The behavior that we want to decrease or eliminate is yelling. We can define on-task behavior as Arielle playing, working, such as doing her homework, and dealing with conflict, such as being disciplined or resolving a problem with another child, without acting out. We can define off-task behavior as the opposite, acting out while playing, working, during conflict.

Behavioral Objectives:

While participating in a group activity, Arielle will not use either screaming or yelling as a way to gain attention, with no more that one oral prompt and only if needed.

Rationale:

Arielle uses acting out as a way to gain attention from the youth center attendants, supervisor, peers. She uses it as a way to be the center of attention, though negative in nature. If the attendants need to focus on Arielle, they cannot divide their attention to help the other children with homework or play with the other children. If the supervisor needs to become involved, he is unable to complete the day-to-day work that is needed to run the youth center adequately and efficiently meeting the needs of all participants. When Arielle uses yelling to gain attention, she distracts her peers, preventing them from completing their homework. This has a negative outcome on all attending the program. If the children are not completing their homework in the time provided and meeting the needs of the attendants and their families, the attendants will need to extend homework time, thus preventing the children from playing the games that they want and having a well balanced after school program.

Data Collection:

Interval Recording ( data attached )

I chose to use the interval recording method, because that I would be a useful way to see how much Arielle uses acting out during a day at the youth center. During this time I accurately recorded the situation, and time of day that she acted out. This identified if she was doing so while having fun or if it were a conflict of some sort. I used intervals of 15 minutes because I believed that it was short enough that it can encase a time period of where she was acting out yet long enough to identify if she was acting in a manner that was positive for her and her peers.

Over all, during the week of March 25,2005 to March 29, 2005 Arielle was acting out 44.6% of the time. This may be a high estimate because of my long time intervals, but it is a good reflection of the situation. I have identified why it is important to use a shorter interval, though I still believe that these statistics are valid and accurate. This statistic may also be abnormally high due to the fact that this was the week before the children's spring break and the anticipation may have exacerbated the acting out.

Arielle would act appropriately; using on-task behavior, during the first half of homework time, but after that she began to act out more after her homework was done. She also argued over playing video games many times and for long periods of time. These video games seem to have high value to her; this is an opportunity to use these as reinforcement when I try to alter her behavior.