Welcome to our live chat with Shelley Neilsen. Shelley is a Behavioral Consultant with Minneapolis Public Schools; and a research assistant and final-year doctoral student at the University of Minnesota. She is going to talk with us about "Life After the FBA, or Linking Assessment to Intervention."

Hi everyone. Welcome to life after the FBA.

Before we get started on our topic, could you could tell us a little more about your background prior to pursuing your doctoral degree?

Sure, Before I moved to Minnesota, I was an ECSE teacher in Montana. I worked in an integrated setting for children with and without disabilities as well as coordinating a university-based lab school and supervised practicum students in various fields. One of the reasons that led me to Minnesota was the frustration I felt as a teacher in meeting the needs of children with challenging behavior. I wanted to learn more about best practices in the area of assessment and intervention for young children with challenging behavior. I think I came to the right place.

Shelley, do you find there is a systematic way to decide on the interventions we should use when we move from the Functional Assessment to the behavior support plan?

I think part of the systematic process is in summarizing your FBA data. The first thing to summarize are the consequences maintaining the problem behavior. In other words, what are the functions of the behavior? Secondly, what are the environmental variables predicting the problem behavior? Or what are the problem times, those moments when you hold your breath and hope that you make it through that time of the day. If the team has done a nice job summarizing and if needed verifying that information, some times interventions will jump right out. In addition, as you know, sometimes in gathering your FBA data some environmental arrangement strategies can be implemented right away.

Can you give me some examples of environmental variables that could be predicting the problem behavior?

Yes, some predictors can be activity related. For example, it might be an activity that the student finds difficult or simply dislikes. For example, I had a student with autism that would fall on the ground and scream when finger-painting was available. We didn't even ask him to finger paint just that other children were engaging in that activity.

When you look at those data, are you first thinking about WHAT or HOW to intervene?

Do you mean by what to intervene as the problem behavior or are you referring to an activity or routine?

The problem behavior.

Hopefully the "what" has been determined when beginning the FBA. So, that should be determined early on. When looking at the data, the team may need to prioritize a couple of behaviors to start with or, better yet, some activities or routines in which to intervene. When I think of the how, I think of the when, who, and what exactly will be doing to prevent the behavior and respond appropriately when the challenging behavior does occur.

I guess what I was thinking was if tantrums occur to escape a task. Then maybe we start by saying let's teach an acceptable alternative and then once we decide on the alternative then we choose a specific tactic or tactics that will best teach the alternative.

Yep, sounds good. In addition we need to decide if we can honor the new request and if we can alter the contingencies from the previous problem behavior. In addition, we need to consider the contextual fit of the intervention with the teaching team or family members. Back to Judy's question about antecedents. In addition to a specific activity, the antecedent could be related to diverted teacher attention or lack of teacher attention as well as denied access to a favorite toy or activity and terminated access. For example, one of the students in my dissertation engages in pretty high rates of challenging behavior when told he can't have things. The teaching team decided they couldn't honor every request. So for an intervention, we're using a picture schedule and embedding previously requested items (food) with activities that are required as part of his day.

LM, do you see any difficulties linking the FA and interventions that relate specifically to the home setting when you work with parents?

LM: No. I see a nice relationship to what I am already doing in the home.

Where do you work? I take it that you work with families in the home.

LM: Yes, my title is Child Development Specialist. I work with families with children preschool age and younger. 

When you say embedding the items in activities during the day, as part of the activity or as a reinforcer?

As both activity and reinforcer. For example, food is highly reinforcing. On his schedule, he starts with group time and then we have a "picnic" Following the snack time, his schedule includes a writing activity or art. Then, we return to a highly preferred activity like play with cars. This process is repeated for the day.

Interesting; I haven't seen a lot of journal articles on embedding.

No. Carr includes a chapter in his book on it. I'm blanking out on the name of the text. Karen, help.

Is it the one he's had out for several years on Functional Communication?

KA: The Carr reference is "Communication-based intervention for problem behavior: A user’s guide for producing positive change." and it's from 1994. Authors are Carr, E. G., Levin, L., McConnachie, G., Carlson, J. I., Kemp, D. C., & Smith, C. E. Hope that's what you wanted.

Yep, that's it. Thanks. It's working pretty well for this particular student, but we've had to tweak it along the way, such as when all of the sudden one day he asks for something never before. The next day we add it to the schedule.

In working with parents how do they seem to respond to the idea of understanding the function of behavior?

Participant: Well, I am just new to all of this. I am one of the new people...just started taking the class [Positive Approaches to Challenging Behavior in Young Children].

Participant: That's ok, we're all learning more as we work with this model.

Participant: Ok. I am looking forward to testing my skills in the home.

Participant: Seems like teachers usually have some background for understanding function but parents are so varied in education, child experience, and job training.

Shelley Neilsen: The other important part of linking assessment to intervention is the implementing part. One of my biggest challenges is supporting and training teachers to implement the interventions. I can imagine that would be difficult with parents too.

What do you think the biggest implementation issue is with teachers (or parents)?

One is understanding how their behavior contributes to the problem behavior.

Yes, I am always waiting for the light bulb to go on. Then I know that they got it!

Second, being able to change their behavior. It's such an interactive process and adult's behavior is being reinforced/punished too. Third, hanging in with the intervention long enough to see an effect or to start with baby steps. One of the things mentioned earlier in regards to FCT is identifying a new behavior. I think sometimes we think the child will learn it overnight and aren't sure how to teach it.

Yeah, it seems that it in part affects the intervention. Clearly identifying what you want to replace the challenge with and then choosing a tactic (embedding, tolerance for delay, etc.).

Have you found that there are things that you can do or say to help that "light bulb" turn on?

I try and start out with simple things for the parents and find out how the parent learns so that I can teach to them in that mode. Modeling seems to be a useful way.

What about you, Judy? I know you work with parents too.

One thing I have used with parents to help them see the relationship between the behavior, antecedents and consequence is to have them do an ABC with a positive behavior first. An example might be how the child responds when the parent picks the child up from day care and the child runs to them and gives them a hug. Looking at the ABC sometimes helps to transfer the concept to the more challenging behaviors.

How about using the experimental analysis/environmental manipulation as a way of turning the light on? Either modeling it or having them do it.

Nothing's more believable than data, at least I hope. In closing, I think the biggest obstacle I see in linking assessment to intervention is really using the assessment to design intervention. Often I see intervention brainstorming sessions where people brainstorm things they've used in the past with other children and not referring to the FBA and then they wonder why the intervention didn't work. In addition, I often see schools not using FBA to its full potential and viewing it only as a due process procedure but not useful for other reasons. If we really want to meet the spirit and intent of the law, we need to do demonstrate the utility of FBA through effective intervention results.

Thanks for chatting with us today, Shelley. It's been very helpful.

Thanks to all of you. It's been fun.

Jim, we are anxious to see the article on Environmental Manipulation you mentioned in your chat with us in February. I’m looking forward to reading it.

Participant Jim Fox: Leia and I have just finished proofing one version (training) and are working on another one that's longer more detailed. Will send it to you soon.

Thanks for joining us today.

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

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