Psch 7001 - Prioritization of Behavior

Prioritization of Behavior

Jennifer Sweeney

PSCH/7001

April 23, 2007

Danielle Bratton

Prioritization of Behavior

Prioritizing behavior is an aspect of Applied Behavioral Analysis that is very important.  This helps the clinician prioritize behaviors based on 9 steps to decide which is the important of the behaviors should be treated before others.  In this paper, Jackson a five-year-old boy with developmental disabilities, his three behaviors of eloping to touch the bus wheels, taking toys from peers and letting food fall out of his mouth.  The behaviors will be ranked in order of most importance to least to help figure out what to work on first with Jackson.

Considerations When Prioritizing Behavior

        Clinicians have several things that they need to take into consideration when prioritizing

the behaviors of the client (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2007).  The biggest consideration is does the specific behavior cause danger to the client or those around the client (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2007).  This tells a clinician the priority if the child is a safety risk (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2007).  The next consideration is how often will the person use the new skill or skills.  This can also mean how often the problem behavior can happen (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2007).  By knowing if it is a ongoing and consistent problem a clinician can also track to see if it is a priority or something that can wait for a while to work on (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2007).  Third, how long has it been since the behavior or skill has been an issue to the client (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2007).  By knowing this specific information, it gives the clinician a time frame to establish the pattern of behavior (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2007).  This also helps in tracking when trying to decide which goals are more pertinent.  Next the clinician looks at how much has the behavior already been reinforced and at what rate (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2007).  This means that a client could have been negatively reinforced for a behavior over a period and this specific behavior or skill could be a detriment to them or those around them.  Importance of how the behavior impacts the client in future skill learning is something also that a clinician must take into consideration (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2007).  Finally, success and cost are also big areas when trying to change a behavior.  If a clinician feels that the data can show growth it may also be cost effective to change the behavior (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2007).

Elopement

        Jackson loves to see the wheels on the buses.  Jackson will also often run across the school parking lot to see and touch the wheels.  This learner chose this as the most important behavior to work on because Jackson is a danger to himself and to the teachers that may also get hurt when running after him.  This is the first step in prioritizing behavior.  Cooper, Heron and Heward (2007), tells that a behavior that is a safety risk to the client and or other individuals must be dealt with first because of the immediate danger to everyone involved. This means that this should be the goal first worked on with Jackson (Cooper, Heron and Heward). As a clinician, this learner ranked this goal first due to Jackson’s lack of understanding how he could be hurt.  Elopement is one of the most dangerous safety concerns with children that have developmental disabilities.  Educators and parents of children with developmental disabilities after working on treatment goals were more likely to monitor and use electronic devices to help control the wondering (Kiely, Migdal, Vettam & Adesman, 2016).