Supporting Appropriate Behavior in Students With Asperger Syndrome (continued)

Key issues to address when discussing these types of strategies are:

• What can be done to eliminate the problem situation (e.g., the offending condition)?
• What can be done to modify the situation if the situation cannot be eliminated entirely?
• Will the strategy need to be permanent, or is it a temporary “fix” which allows the student (with support) to increase skills needed to manage the situation in the future?

Make teaching alternative skills an integral part of your program.

Students with Asperger’s should be taught acceptable behaviors that replace problematic behavior and that serve the same purpose as the challenging behavior. For example, a young child with Asperger’s may have trouble entering into a kick ball game and instead inserts himself into the game, thereby offending the other players and risking exclusion. Instead, the child can be coached on how and when to enter into the game. Never assume that a student knows appropriate social behaviors. While these students are quite gifted in many ways, they will need to be taught social and pragmatic communication skills as methodically as academic skills.

Self-management strategies also are important skills to teach. Self-management teaches people to discriminate their own target behavior and record the occurrence or absence of that target behavior (Koegel, Koegel & Parks, 1995). Self-management assists students in achieving greater levels of independent functioning across many settings and situations. Instead of teaching situation specific behaviors, self-management teaches a more general skill that can be applied in an unlimited number of settings. The procedure has particular relevance and immediate utility for students with Asperger’s who can be taught, for example, how to practice relaxation or how to find a place to regroup when upset.

Understand the characteristics of Asperger’s that may influence a student’s ability to learn and function in the school environment.

It is important to understand the idiosyncratic nature of Asperger’s and to consider problematic behaviors in light of characteristics associated with this disability. Following are some general characteristics as described by Williams (1995):

• Insistence on sameness: easily overwhelmed by minimal changes in routines, sensitive to environmental stressors, preference for rituals.
• Impairment in social interactions: difficulty understanding the “rules” of interaction, poor comprehension of jokes and metaphor, pedantic speaking style.
• Restricted range of social competence: preoccupation with singular topics, asking repetitive questions, obsessively collecting items.
• Inattention: poor organizational skills, easily distracted, focused on irrelevant stimuli, difficulty learning in group contexts.
• Poor motor coordination: slow clerical speed, clumsy gait, unsuccessful in games involving motor skills.
• Academic difficulties: restricted problem solving skills, literal thinking, deficiencies with abstract reasoning.
• Emotional vulnerability: low self-esteem, easily overwhelmed, poor coping with stressors, self-critical.
• Behavior serves a function, is related to context, and is a form of communication.

Effective behavioral support is contingent on understanding the student, the context in which he/she operates, and the reason(s) for behavior. In order to effectively adopt a functional behavioral assessment approach, several assumptions about behavior must be regarded as valid.