Blog #3
My individual client that I am doing my intervention with is a five-year-old boy with ADHD and odd (oppositional defiance disorder). Through out this paper I will refer to my client as child A. His mother brought him in at the beginning of the year because of impulsivity during class as well as at home. I went through a couple of different measurements before finally figuring out what measurement I was going to be using for this project. The initial measurement that I started with was the freeze game. Unfortunately the freeze game became did not work well as a measurement tool. After testing out many different activities with my client I decided that a reward system would work the best.
Since starting with my client we have been doing a sticker chart. If he behaves throughout the entire session he gets two stickers at the end, one to put on his chart and the other to put on his hand. The chart consists of stickers and a goal. The goal is if he gets eleven stickers he will receive a bigger prize, which he has chosen to be a robot. Child A and I discussed what it meant to behave during our sessions in order to get the stickers. Together Child A and I wrote out a rules chart and both signed it. The rule chart consisted of rules such as taking turns talking, keeping our hands to ourself, follow rules while playing games, etc.
Each session child A starts with 50 points. Every time that one of the rules on our sticker chart is broken he loses 5 points. If he does something great and follows rules he gets 10 points. If he ends the day with 80 points he only gets on sticker and he can chose whether or not that sticker goes on his chart or on his hand. If he gets down to 40 points he doesn’t get any stickers for the day because he has broken too many of the rules. Every time that Child A loses a points I inform him of why he lost the points and how many points that he has left. Everytime that he gets more points I explain to him what he did write and give him a high-five as well as points. This way he is able to keep track and be fully aware of where he stands in terms of getting stickers for that day.
According to a paper written by Saul Axelrod at the University of Connecticut, children with behavior problems will behave better within a classroom setting with token reinforcements. Although the tokens have little value, if you accumulate them you are able to buy something better within a classroom setting. One of the advantages to token reinforcements is instant gratification. Since token reinforcement provides instant gratification a child is able to get feedback and reinforcement instantly. The children within the classroom are able to know exactly when something is being done correctly and when they are behaving. This essentially will help them associate good behaviors with tokens. (Axelrod, 203, 1971).
Another study that was done by STEPHEN D. A. HUPP, DAVID REITMAN, JOHN NORTHUP, PATRICK O’CALLAGHAN, MONIQUE LEBLANC at Louisiana State University stated that sportsman like behaviors were increased when they were accompanied by praise and tokens. This study was done with young children who were diagnosed with ADHD. This in turn can be taken to mean that when the tokens and praise were given to the children the desired behavior occurred more often. (Hupp et. al.,2002). The reinforcement of appropriate behaviors with rewards is the same thing that I am doing with my client in our office.
A third study that shows that rewards as reinforcement has been a proven theory to work with children with ADHD was done by Van Lier in 2004. In his stude he took 24 first grades without a diagnosis of ADHD and rewarded them each time they did appropriate behaviors within the classroom. This was done during “good behaviors games” The program was carried out for 24 months. After 24 months the ADHD related problems had decreased within the classroom compared to the participants within the control group. (Miranda, 2006).
The theory that supports this practice is behavior modification. Behavior modification is taking the undesired behaviors of someone and attempting to modify them to become desired behaviors. By rewarding the child’s positive actions he is able to learn what they should be doing with reinforcement. They begin to associate rewards with good behaviors. Hopefully as the child continues to get rewarded they want to do more of the positive behaviors in order to get more rewards ultimately making the negative behaviors become less and less.
Work Cited
Axelrod, Saul. (1971). Token reinforcement programs in special classes [Exceptional Children, 1971. VOl 37. n5 pp 371-379]. Retrieved from ttp://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=6- vnZJjtBGUC&oi=fnd&pg=PA192&dq=behavior+modification&ots=u0yiG83ecr &sig=u5DHIXT-G5hZPDF_48ryXwvEofE#v=onepage&q&f=false
Miranda, A., Jarque, S., & Tárraga, R. (2006). Interventions in school settings for students with ADHD. Exceptionality, 14(1), 35-52. doi:10.1207/s15327035ex1401_4
Stephen D. A. Hupp, David Reitman, John Northup, Patrick O’Callaghan, and Monique LeBlanc. The Effects of Delayed Rewards, Tokens, and Stimulant Medication on Sportsmanlike Behavior with Adhd-Diagnosed Children Behav Modif April 2002 26: 148-162, doi:10.1177/0145445502026002002
A sounds like an interesting client and your working with him while he is so young could set the stage for school success later on.
ReplyDeleteA couple of quick comments:
1) You may want to consider assessing how A is doing in the classroom in addition to what you are doing in your office. Work with children, particularly young children whose behavior you are looking to modify, is best done in vivo. Perhaps you could do the same thing you are doing with him in your office in the classroom? You may also want to think about expanding this treatment to his home.
2) Your reward system looks particularly complicated. One way to make this a bit easier is to give him 10 tokens at the beginning of the session and take one away when he misbehaves and give him one when he does something to be praised. Adding and subtracting points in 10s may be too mathematically challenging for a young child.
3) Behavior modification is a treatment modality, not a theory, but the theory you are using is behavioral theory based on operant conditioning. This is a particularly good theory to apply to kids with ADD and, in some cases ODD, so I think you may be on the right track with him.
Overall, a very nice paper. Your in paper citations are not completely correct, so check the APA manual in order to correct them. One other critique is that you should proofread your paper a bit more carefully before posting.
Looking forward to seeing how your work with A shapes up.