1st Case Study: Johnny

Johnny

Johnny is a mentally challenged six-year-old boy. Johnny bites his classmates during group activities, and he pinches and laughs at his teacher during face-to-face education. Johnny will focus on group activities throughout class and stop biting his classmates as replacement behaviors. Also, instead of pinching his teacher, Johnny will listen to him during face-to-face education. Interval recording is a method that might be useful for measuring Johnny's behavior (Lee et al., 2006).

The best way for measuring the aforementioned behavior

The best way for measuring the aforementioned behavior is interval recording. Interval recording is used when documenting a behavior that has occurred for short periods of time (Beck, 2011). For example, Johnny’s actions include biting classmates and pinching his teacher during class. Such behaviors occur for short periods of time regarded as intervals. An observer indicates whether a student has engaged in a behavior or not. For Johnny’s case study, an observer can record whether he has bitten his fellow students and whether he has pinched his teacher or not during the face-to-face instruction from the teacher (Neitzel & Bogin, 2008).

To directly assess Johnny’s behavior, firstly, I would schedule the period of observation at the time when Johnny is likely to engage in such acts. For this case study, Johnny is likely to engage in his biting behavior during group activities in class and pinching during face-to-face instruction time with the teacher. However, I would use a short period, for example, 30 minutes. Secondly, I would divide the above period into equal intervals. Finally, I would count the episodes that the behavior has taken place. Divide the number of episodes by a total number of intervals and then multiply by one hundred to get the percentage of behavior intervals (Carr, 1994).

2nd Case Study: Alex

The case study involves a six years old Kindergarten student, Alex, who suffers from a learning disability. During math class, Alex engages in off-task behavior such as sleeping during class, going to the bathroom frequently during class, and looking at Sports magazine during seat-work. However, the replacement behavior would be engaging in reading, writing and math discussion with another student during seat-work assignment instead of looking at a sports magazine. Moreover, another replacement behavior would be following teacher’s instructions during math class and avoid visiting the bathroom frequently. To measure the amount of time that Alex spends on off-task during class, I would use Duration Recording (Mason & Egel, 1995).

The Duration Recording method

The Duration Recording method is appropriate for use in this case study because it can successfully document how long a student get involved in a distinctive behavior (Beck, 2011). Furthermore, the method is utilized in the measuring behavior that bears distinctive beginning as well as the end. Alex behaviors have distinctive beginning as well as end. He engages in off-task behaviors like frequently going to bathroom during the math lesson and looking at Sports Magazines during class (Carr, 1994).

To measure the amount of time that Alex spends off-task during class, I would first start the stopwatch when Alex begins his off-task behaviors that include frequently going the bathroom during class and looking at Sports magazine in during class. Secondly, I would stop the stopwatch immediately when Alex off-task behaviors end. Thirdly, I would record the amount time that the behaviors take place. Fourthly, I would repeat the above steps up to the end of the lesson since Alex’s off-task behaviors are recurrent throughout the period. Finally, I would carry out calculations by adding every episode’s duration during the observation time to determine the total duration (Lee et al., 2006).

References

Beck, J.S. (2011). Cognitive behavior therapy: Basics and beyond (2nd ed.), New York, NY: The Guilford Press, pp. 19–20

Carr, E. (1994). Emerging themes in functional analysis of problem behavior. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 27, 393-400.

Lee, D. L., Belfiore, P. J., Ferko, D., Hua, Y., Carranza, M., & Hildebrand, K. (2006). Using pre and post low-p latency to assess behavioral momentum: A preliminary investigation. Journal of Behavioral Education, 15, 203–214.

Mason, S. A. & Egel, A. L. (1995). What does Amy like? Using a mini-reinforcer assessment to increase student participation in instructional activities. Teaching Exceptional Children, 28, 42-45.

Neitzel, J. & Bogin, J. (2008). Steps for implementation: Functional behavior assessment. Chapel Hill, NC: The National Professional Development Center on Autism Spectrum Disorders, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, The University of North Carolina.