Welcome to a live chat with Dr. James Fox on the topic of environmental manipulation. Jim is the Research Director for the Center for Early Childhood Learning and Development and the Project Director of Make a Difference at East Tennessee State University. Maybe, Jim, we could start with a description of environmental manipulation.

Ok, I think the best way of thinking about it is to view EM as a "behavioral allergy test." I'm going to use EM as a shorthand for environmental manipulation. Just like when you go to the allergist and describe symptoms (symptoms = behaviors, antecedents, consequences).

Functional assessment starts by getting this kind of informant, indirect information (interviews, rating scales). The allergist then makes a physical exam of you and this is like the observational phase of FBA. Finally, the allergist exposes you to limited amounts of substances to which ones will actually cause a reaction and he/she does this in a controlled safe manner. That's the role of EM in doing FBA: To check out the things that all of the other assessment information makes us suspect. Then by trying out different changes in the classroom (curricular, materials, how we respond to students' appropriate and inappropriate behaviors we complete the "allergy test." When we find what changes in the classroom actually produce changes in student behavior, we've validated the hypotheses we have formed about the function of student's challenging behaviors or the behaviors that we choose as alternatives, or replacements. Let me stop and see what reactions people may have.

I like your analogy. Can you give me a child-specific example?

Sure, let's say we have a child who has tantrums in circle time and from the earlier parts of the FBA we think it maybe that he is seeking attention. Attention from the teacher or peers. Another possibility is that he may be seeking to escape from a circle time that is too long for his current attention span. We could test the attention hypothesis in one of several ways. First, if we have noticed that the teacher spends a lot of time scolding the child when he tantrums or perhaps trying to comfort him instead. We might have the teacher consistently ignore the tantrums. This might be done for a day and the next day we might have the teacher go back to providing scolding (of comforting) to the child when he tantrums.

If we alternate this over several days and see that his tantrums are worse on those days when the teacher attends to them and lower on those days that they are ignored, then this confirms the attention hypothesis as ONE of the things that affects the tantrum. But this is just one possibility. To test whether he might also tantrum to escape the long circle time we could have circle time reduced on some days and return to the longer time on other days to see if the tantrums are lower on the short circle time days and worse on the longer circle time days. In real life, behaviors often have more than one function so we need to check out each one of those reasonable hypotheses. Let me stop again.

This sounds pretty straightforward. I was in a meeting this morning where sensory was also being considered as part of the child's aggressive behavior. How would you suggest manipulating the environment to sort out sensory?

Good question. Let me say first that there are some behaviors and situations where it may not be possible, advisable or safe to do EM. There are often ways around this but we have to be creative. Let's get back to your question. What was the sensory behavior?

The child was hitting peers. The staff did an MAS and three different staff members came up with the three different functions: Attention, obtaining tangible, and sensory.

Ok, that is real life!!!! Well, certainly there are possible sensory consequences to hitting and virtually any other behavior. Let's say we suspect that there is some reinforcing quality of hitting the actual physical contact. We could arrange to monitor the physical act and intervene by blocking the behavior before contact is made--sort of letting him begin to hit but stopping it before he actually hits. So, there is no contact or "pleasure" of hitting someone and making them cry--the brother-sister syndrome as it were!

Now this is kind of a difficult example and may be one of those situations where we can't allow even a blocked attempt to hit to occur. So we may have to alter the situation some. Depending on the seriousness of the hitting, the probability that there are other more likely hypotheses about the function of hitting--attention form the teacher, attention from peers, or accessing some toy or play material, we might want to investigate those events first and if EM with those explanations doesn't pan out, then address the more difficult sensory consequences. If we suspect that attention from the teacher might be involved, then we could do EM by using the "attention to the victim" strategy. That is, when our boy hit at or on someone, the teacher or aide would quickly and very minimally separate the problem child from the group and spend most of her time comforting the "victim". We would expect then that if teacher attention shift away from the problem child to the victim whenever the problem child hit, then hitting would decrease under the attention to the victim condition and increase when we scolded or attended to the hitter.

Participant: Hi, Jim. What about ethical issues surrounding EM?

Another good point! There are clearly ethical issues. Let me list several and then we can discuss them. First, when doing EM insure that you do no harm. Harm to the kid, peers, or staff. Second, in situations that pose some risk (all do to some degree) have precautions in place to deal with them. Third, ensure that staff know what they're doing to test the hypothesis and what they should do "If".... Fourth, take data on the behavior and if it is clearly getting out of control, plan on criteria for stopping the EM. Finally, only do EM or at least the riskier Elms with informed consent. I'll stop for a moment.

Then you're saying that EM is not for all situations of function dilemma?

Yes, either the situations are too dangerous, ethically questionable or it is not practical to do EM with certain behaviors. For example, some kids may get suspended or referred for behaviors like having a weapon. Older kids may get put out for smoking. Even milder forms of behavior may not be ones that we can practically do EM with. We have basically two choices here Use the informant and descriptive observational information to make a best GUESS about function and what intervention might be effective or we can do EM with some milder, less dangerous related or precursor behavior. I'll break for a minute

Doesn't this take a lot of extra staff and time?

It can, depending upon how technical you want or need to get and how important it is to get a clear answer to what causes the behavior. There are ways of making it less of a problem to do EM. We can discuss these too. But we have often done EM successfully in our project with classroom teachers and staff.

Judy Swanson to Participant: Have you had any challenging experiences with EM?

Participant: On a lighter note, Elms don't have to be so involved or complicated. They can be as simple as rearranging a classroom if you think that the distractions are causing challenging behaviors. Most of the challenges that I have encountered are having the teacher effectively carry out an EM.

Participant: So it doesn't have to be outsiders coming in to evaluate?

Yeah, I'd say that is my experience too. I think when you can arrange for a teacher or staff person to do or help do the EM, then it can be a very powerful demonstration to that person that they can positively affect the student's behavior. The experience is often one of the light bulb going off and seeing that yes it is possible for me to do something right here in the classroom that gets rid of the bad behavior or improves the student's appropriate behavior even though he may have a disability and/or he comes from a really deprived or problematic home situation.

Participant: Showing previous collected data and compare it to data collected after an EM can help teachers to see the effects on behaviors.

Jim Fox to Participant: Have you been involved in doing EM?

Participant: Not much. Just ready to learn.

Do you have articles that you would suggest on the topic of EM?

Leia and I are finishing up a couple of papers on the topic of EM. One lays out a couple of real examples from our cases and is very teacher friendly. It will be about two weeks before it is ready for preliminary, limited distribution but we'd be glad to send it to you or others in return for some brief feedback on it. Let me know if any of ya'll (we're in the south here!) are interested and we can send it to you via snail mail, e-mail or perhaps put a more final version on the web-site.

Thanks, Jim, for your expertise today. To all participants, remember questions and comments can be posted to the discussion board at any time. Our next live chat is Linking Assessment to Intervention.

 Joe Reichle, Ph.D., Co-Principal Investigators
LeAnne Johnson, Project Coordinator
Phone: 612-626-3457  E-mail: chaf0032@umn.edu

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