Case Study Of Functional Behavior Assessment And Intervention On Vocal Repetitive Behaviors Of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

As a type of restrictive and repetitive behaviors (RRBs), vocal repetitive behaviors have a high prevalence in children with autism spectrum disorder, presenting huge challenges to children and their parents as well as teachers. Compared with abundant related studies abroad, there are rare studies of intervention on vocal repetitive behaviors of children with autism spectrum disorder in our country. Hence it is of great significance to focus on the intervention on vocal repetitive behaviors in this study.The purpose of this study is to explore the function of the vocal repetitive behaviors of children with autism spectrum disorder in class situation, and to examine the effects of the intervention strategies based on the functional behavioral assessment. This study selects two autistic children and then assesses the function of their vocal repetitive behaviors through the questionnaire, observation and interviews. The results show that, the function of one participant’s vocal repetitive behaviors is to escape the aversive tasks or activities or to get sensory stimulation; and the function of the other one’s vocal repetitive behaviors is to escape the aversive situation or to get the objects or to get sensory stimulation. Based on the function of the two children’s vocal repetitive behaviors, the study takes the corresponding intervention. During the training period, the study adopts multiple-baseline across participants design, and uses visual analysis to evaluate the effects of intervention. The results show that the intervention has a remarkable effect on the vocal repetitive behaviors.The conclusions of this study are as follows:(1) besides automatic reinforcement, the vocal repetitive behaviors of autistic children have significant social consequences, mainly for gaining attention or help and escaping tasks or criticism; (2) functional behavioral assessment and intervention can effectively reduce the vocal repetitive behaviors of autistic children. The intervention, which focus on antecedent-based strategies and supplement by behavior-based and consequence-based strategies, can reduce the vocal repetitive behaviors of autistic children without interfering the regular teaching milieu and play an important role in prevention.