Studies On Stereotyped Behaviors Of Autistic Children With Positive Intervention

As a kind of repetitive behaviors, stereotyped behaviors widely exist in the children with mental retardation and autism. These kinds of behaviors not only influence the learning of children, but also the learning of other students and the teaching of teachers. For special education teachers, stereotyped behaviors often let them feel helpless and seem no way to be solved, so teachers urgently need to find effective intervention strategies to solve such behavioral problems.In this article, the author studied the performance, function, and intervention strategies of stereotyped behaviors of students with autism from two parts.In the first part of this article, questionnaire and interview were used to investigate the special education teacher from special schools for students with mental retardation, in order to know the performances, functions of stereotyped behaviors of children with autism, and intervention strategies which teachers always used to change the behaviors. The results of this study showed that more than 80% students with autism often display the stereotyped behaviors, including running back and forth, jumping, touching, sniffing objects, pinching and flicking fingers, waving his arms, often holding something; more than 60% students showed scratching the body, body movements, rocking back and forth, biting things. Among these kind of stereotyped behaviors, hitting the head and the body were the least, but almost respectively 51.4% and 47.2% students showed those. In addition, stereotyped behaviors were maintained not only by automatic reinforcement, but also by escaping disliked things and gaining attention from others . The results of this study also showed that verbal prevention and behavior guidance were commonly used by special education teachers to intervene the stereotyped behaviors, but couldn't get the satisfied effect.In the second part of this article, functional assessments were conducted to analyze the function of stereotyped behaviors of two children with autism in their classroom environments. The results of two assessments showed that the functions of their behaviors were to gain automatic, positive and negative reinforcements. According to the functions of these stereotyped behaviors, intervention strategies were developed and used. Through antecedent manipulations, differential reinforcement of alternative behaviors and functional communication training, the stereotyped behaviors of these two students with autism changed obviously.Based on the result of the research, a comprehensive intervention strategy based on pre- intervention should be advised. At the same time, in order to make the effect of intervention more effective and lasting, strengthening the training on grassroots teachers about the knowledge of autism, and establishing assist teachers still be suggested. In addition, stratified teaching suitable for autism in the classroom teaching should be carried out.