Positive Behavior Support Model for Inclusion of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Individuals with disabilities often engage in disruptive behavior that entails challenges not only for their own quality of life but also the lives of others around them. In spite of the abilities of the children with disabilities due to the severe challenges experienced by the teachers, parents and also the child themselves for the inability to address the behavior needs it act as a major hindrances for inclusion in classroom and community lives. Exclusion from classroom, school and community leads to less scope for social development and thereby leads to isolation, aloofness and developmental deficits. Henceforth addressing the problem behavior remains the first step for participation and inclusion of children with developmental disabilities including other behavior needs. However teacher faces the skill deficit to identify the function of the behavior to arrive at the most suitable intervention to best meet the needs of the child. The significance of functional analyses (FA) for determining the function of problem behavior has been paramount so that a well tailored intervention can be designed that will be function based and most effective. With this objective the present study examines the application of trial-based functional analyses for determining the function of problem behavior of a 7 year old child with autism in a classroom setting following the single subject design research. Findings indicate effective way of determining the function of head hitting as target problem behavior followed with a function-based intervention. The proposed model can assist and empower the teachers and also parents for providing positive behavior support which further opens up access to an inclusion classroom.