Effects of functional communication training and self-monitoring with programmed generalization for three students with or at-risk for emotional behavioral disorders.

Abstract

"Effects of functional communication training and self-monitoring with programmed generalization for three students with or at-risk for emotional behavioral disorders." (2017 To the doc students that came before me and blazed the trail, Chris, Lauren, and Lindsay, and those that came along side me and encouraged me through this process, Beth, Gwen, and Nathan, thank you. We were/are in this together! know it. But you were patient and so very helpful, so thank you.And finally, to Mr. D. and the Professionals of Westlane Middle School '09-'12.On paper, I was your teacher; but you taught me more than I could have ever hoped to learn in college. I have been thinking about every one of you throughout this journey.Your pictures are on my office wall to remind me why I came back to school. I wanted to learn better ways to positively impact the lives of kids like you. It took me three years and more stress than I would ever want to experience again, but in the end, I learned that we knew the answer all along-never. The use of functional assessment based interventions to address the problem behavior of students with emotional/behavioral disorders (EBD) is supported by an emerging evidence base. Few studies, however, have assessed the generality (i.e., the transfer of behavior change across settings, behavior, or students) of function-based interventions for this population. This study employed a multiple baseline across students design to evaluate setting generalization of functional communication training (FCT) with self-monitoring for three students with or at-risk for EBD. FCT yielded significant reductions in problem behavior and increased rates of appropriate attention recruitment (i.e., hand-raising) for all three participants in isolation. However, no change in behavior was observed during concurrent observations in a generalization setting.Subsequently, self-mediated physical and verbal stimuli were introduced in the generalization setting to promote skill transfer. Each student responded to the generalization programming procedures with reduced rates of problem behavior and increased rates of hand-raising in generalization settings. Results of the study support the vii use of programmed generalization strategies with function-based interventions for students with EBD.