The Effect Of Sensory Integration Intervention On The Auto-enhanced Behavior Of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders

People used the term "automatic reinforcement behavior" to refer to the maintaining variable(s) for operant behaviors whose reinforcers are not mediated by the social environment. For these behaviors, the maintaining reinforcer is a direct result of the behavior. Functional assessment of stereotypy often concludes that the behaviors are automatically reinforced. It is likely that stereotyped behaviors often produce visual, tactile, vestibular, or other desirable sensory stimulation that serves as reinforcement. On the other hand, according to Sensory Integration Intervention (SIT), people with autism may experience problems integrating information from the vestibular, proprioceptive and tactile systems. And SIT is designed to restore effective neurological processing by enhancing each of these systems. Sensory stimulation is typically provided in activities such as rocking, jumping on a trampoline, swinging, rolling and riding on scooter boards. However, due to many interventions did not carry out functional behavior analysis, many automatically reinforced behaviors are not recognized, and trained by various sensory aspects of intervention as common challenging behaviors. There is also a situation that although some studies have a functional analysis of the targeted behavior, the special sensory needs of the behavior usually has ignored by some sensory stimulation based interventions which were problems with either too general or too simplistic.So, we conducted functional analyses to determine if aberrant behavior was maintained by automatic reinforcement. We then used two assessments of SIT for identifying the sensory disorder of participants’automatic reinforcement behaviors. Finally, we attempted to evaluate the affect of sensory integration based intervention on automatic reinforcement behavior.The participants were two males with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Participants were selected because they each had a history of engaging in stereotypical behavior, primarily in the form of self-stimulating. The target behaviors of them were identified via assessment, including hand flapping and stamping feet. Hand flapping was defined as moving one or both hands in an up and down movement from the top to the bottom of the swing. Stamping feet was defined as any instance of forceful contact with the floor using the sole of either foot to make a noise.Throughout the research includes three parts. Study 1. Observation, scale measurement and experimental method (Multielement Treatment Design of Single Subject Research) of functional analysis was conducted to screen the target behaviors of subjects, and assessment the reinforcers’style of target behaviors. Study2. We used Sensory Integration Rating Scale and Children Sensory Integration Function Rating Scale (preschool Edition) for identifying the sensory needing style of subjects’ automatic reinforcement behaviors. Study3. Made individual treatment plan, which included Sensory Integration Intervention and Wilbarger Protocol, based on the results of pre-assessments by cooperation within two rehabilitation therapist, researcher and parents of participants. And interventions were delivered in a single subject withdrawal B-A-B design for two participants.We used partial interval recording system and videotape to collected data, visual analysis of Single Subject Research, Percent Non-overlapping Data (PND) and Inferential Statistics to analysis data. Interobserver Agreement (IOA) was calculated by partial interval agreement and Kappa coefficients.Comprehensive analysis of the results of our studies, the conclusions obtained as follows:First, the intervention strategy based on Sensory Integration Theory, integrating Wilbarger joint Massage method or other single sensory methods, has certain effect on automatic reinforcement behaviors for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Second, observation, scale measurement and experimental method of functional analysis can certain screen and assessment automatic reinforcement behaviors. Third, the multi-angle assessments of sensory integration function can provide certain help in identifying the sensory needing style automatic reinforcement behaviors.