Effects of Antecedent-Based Intervention in Ecological Assessment Process on the Challenging Behaviors of Students with Intellectual Disabilities during Art Class

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of antecedent-based intervention in the ecological assessment process on the maladaptive behaviors of students with intellectual disabilities. The participants were second-grade middle school students with intellectual disabilities who are enrolled in a special school. The subjects' personal, environmental, and teacher-related factors were analyzed using ecological assessment- direct observation, reviews of existing records, interviews, questionnaires, and functional analysis. The antecedent-based intervention was developed based on the results of ecological assessment. There were three types of challenging behaviors: seat breakaway, noise generation, and task interruption. These behaviors were observed and recorded using the partial interval recording method(20-second intervals comprising 17-second observations with 3-second recordings). Multiple-baseline research design, a type of single-subject design, was employed across three participants for baseline, intervention, and maintenance phases. The data were analyzed using six visual analysis methods: level of data, trend, distribution of data, immediacy effect, percentage of non-overlapping data, and persistence of data. These methods were recently suggested by What Works Clearinghouse (Kratochwill et al., 2013) as quality indicators for single-subject research designs. The results showed that antecedent-based intervention in the ecological assessment process significantly decreased the challenging behaviors of students with intellectual disabilities during art class through a comparison of the intervention interval. The mean value of challenging behaviors was significantly less in all subjects, the percentage of non-overlapping data (PND) value was 100%, and Tau-U value was -1.00, indicating that the effects of the intervention were significant. Compared to the baseline value, the PND value between the baseline and maintenance was 100%, indicating that the intervention effects were significantly consistent. These analyses were discussed in terms of educational implications to apply in special education practices.