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JusticeEelPerson585
Please review the corresponding vignette and use the information…
Please review the corresponding vignette and use the information provided to select alternative or incompatible replacement behavior, develop appropriate antecedent and consequence interventions including all relevant reinforcement, generalization and maintenance procedures, and describe logic for selected treatments.
Vignette 2
Johnny is a 12-year-old boy who attends public school in a large metropolitan city. He
has a diagnosis of intellectual disability which manifests as extreme difficulty completing his
school work. Johnny has also recently received a diagnosis of Oppositional Defiant Disorder.
Aside from these diagnoses, Johnny shows strong social and conversational skills, and has a
wide variety of interests including football, pro wrestling, drawing, and comic books.
Because of the behavior is exhibits while at school, Johnny is in a self-contained
classroom with 11 other students who also engage in “inappropriate” behavior. The classroom
contains one teacher and three teacher’s aides. His teacher reports that Johnny frequently
becomes violent with not only the classroom staff, but with the other students as well. This
behavior typically takes the form of making threats towards others (e.g., “I’m going to beat you
up till you can’t move,” “you’re about to get smacked in the face”), throwing large objects
(chairs, textbooks, laptop) at others, and physical aggression such as hitting and kicking others.
On one occasion, the teacher reported that Johnny has threatened to stab her in the neck with a
pencil. As a result of this threat, Johnny is on the verge of being expelled from the school unless
he can get his behavior under control.
His teacher also notes that Johnny has not completed any of his school work during the
last 6 weeks of the school year. He never does any homework outside of school and will often
refuse to do any work during class time. The teacher notes that when she tries to get him to do
work, he will typically argue with her until she leaves him alone and will often resort to violence
if she persists.
While at school Johnny mostly keeps to himself and doesn’t seem to have any friends in
this classroom. Johnny spends most of his time at school reading things on the computer and
watching online videos. Access to the computer is Johnny’s most preferred activity as the
computer he has at home does not work very well and has limited internet access. He will also
gladly talk with anyone in the class about his favorite topics, though this rarely happens as most
of the students do not seem to like interacting with one another and most of the classroom staff
avoid Johnny from fear of his behavior.
From your direct observations, you have noted that the verbal threat always come before
any acts of physical aggression. In addition, these behaviors tend to reliably occur when Johnny
is made to do schoolwork for longer than approximately 5 minutes, or when he is told he cannot
have or do something he wants to do. The results of your functional behavior assessment
suggest that his aggressive behavior is likely maintained by socially-mediated positive
reinforcement in the form of access to preferred items and activities, as well as socially-mediated
negative reinforcement in the form of escape from non-preferred activities. Scatter plot data
show that the escape-maintained behavior is more likely to occur during the four, hour-long
instructional periods while the behavior maintained by access to tangible items most often occurs
first thing in the morning, during lunch, during recess, and at the end of the day while cleaning
up the classroom and waiting for the bus.
