Assessing Autism Spectrum Disorders Part 2

In part two of the video, the speakers talk about naturalistic observation within various contexts – what you are seeing or not seeing; are you seeing the same things as your team members.  These are important things to consider when doing an assessment.  Quite often we see different behaviors within different environments – in one environment a child can demonstrate a skill, but in another environment they cannot – this could be due to a lack of generalization across settings, or people, or for any number of reasons.  Generality is a skill that needs to be taught to some children, so this is something that is valuable in assessing.  The speakers also talk about the need to examine executive functioning, especially for students with Asperger’s syndrome – in naturalistic observations: note how the student shifts from one task to the next, keeps up with pace of instruction, starting and completing tasks. 

Communication is another important aspect that needs to be assessed thoroughly and constantly throughout your assessment of the student.  This includes functional communication – whether a child can voice his/her needs, ask for help, etc; for verbal and nonverbal children.  They might get overwhelmed and if they can’t express that, it might come out that they don’t know the information, or they can’t do the task.  So it is important to assess whether the student has the skills to tell you if they need a break, and if not, during your assessment you should build in frequent breaks.

At the end of the video, Patricia Schetter talks about behavioral observation through ABC recording procedures.  This is something that I am familiar with, and at my job it is a tool that we use to hypothesize about the function of a certain behavior by gathering details about the antecedents, the specific behavior, and the consequences immediately following that behavior.  ABC recording sheets are great, in that they can provide really helpful information; however an FBA should still be conducted.  For example, one of my students has a time-out procedure for non-redirectable aggressive episodes – and the consequence is an escort to the time out room when this behavior is displayed.  According to the ABC data we graphed, the hypothesized function is escape/avoidance.  This is not hard to see as the consequence for aggressive episodes is a removal from the situation (that being work or any other activity).  However, through an FBA it was determined that the function of aggressive episodes is actually attention (the removal of the student into a time out room where the door is closed and he is monitored by a camera removes all attention from the student).  Had we just used the ABC sheets, we most likely would have gotten rid of the time out procedure, which would have greatly increased the amount of attention given to the student for aggressive episodes.  However, I still that that in a lot of cases the information from your ABC recording sheets is valuable in assessing functions of behavior.