Extract from Behaviour Skills for Parents, Teachers and Support People – A focus on Autism, by Trevor Lewis
BEHAVIOUR
Behaviour is any and every purposeful interaction with space. That is, every purposeful movement or sound is behaviour (not seizure activity, twitches, or other involuntary movements).
So, as you read this text, you are emitting a behaviour – that of reading. Your eyes are moving – and so are interacting with the space around them.
Scratching your head? If you are, this is yet another behaviour, as is clicking the mouse button, shuffling in your seat, calling out to your partner, and so on.
You will hear others, on occasion; make comments like “I don’t want to see any behaviour from you today!”, or, “I work with people with disability who show behaviours sometimes”. If these people did not emit any behaviour it would be likely they were either dead or comatose! The reason you need to have a good understanding of behaviour and its definition, and use the correct terminology is to ensure that communication with others who are also dealing with unwanted behaviour is accurate and everyone is talking about the same thing. Your new knowledge will also help others to understand behaviour, and how they need to develop the appropriate skills to manage that behaviour in a safe way.
So what isn’t behaviour? Involuntary movements like gagging, sneezing, and having a seizure, are not behaviours as they are not voluntary. In other words, we have no control over the movement or action.
As we will discuss in a later chapter, all behaviours serve a function to the person emitting that behaviour. For example, scratching your head: function = stopping an itch. Moving your eyes back and forth while you look at this text: function = enabling you to read so you can learn.
Focus on autism: So, what is stimming? Is it a behaviour? Stimming is a slang term for self-stimulation and can take many different forms of behaviour. Some of the more common stims we may see a person with autism display are hand flapping, spinning around, twiddling pieces of string or material, stretching a rubber band, or one of a myriad of other repetitive behaviours. So yes, stimming is a behaviour because the person is doing something that interacts with the space around them, and it also does have a function. That function is often to reduce stress and subsequently when a person is engaging in a stim type behaviour it can be a sign they are anxious or worrying about something. Another common function is it helps them block out external stimuli that they don’t like, for example noise or activity near them, too many people around, etc. Yet it can also be a sign of boredom, if there isn’t an activity that interests them, they may engage in stimming simply as it is something to do and focus on. If no work has been done on reducing stimming behaviour or around introducing more purposeful behaviours and it has been happening for more than just a few months it may have become habitual. This means it is now a habit and the person may not be fully aware themselves when they are doing it or why they do it. Changing an unwanted habit is discussed in a later chapter. Whether a person with autism should have stimming behaviour changed, reduced, or stopped is a matter for debate. Some will argue it is something they do that helps them cope with the challenges of life so why should we have the right to stop it? Yet the other side of the argument is stimming takes away from time they could be engaging in more productive behaviour and it can be stigmatizing.
Discovering what the function of a behaviour is, is usually one of the most important steps in being able to reduce or stop that behaviour (if it is unwanted) in the future. There are of course behaviours that are wanted but are not being emitted currently that we need to teach. For example, a baby who still voids (goes to toilet) in her/his nappy needs to learn the behaviour of using the toilet. In fact, this skill will comprise of a few different behaviours including removing her/his pants, sitting up on the toilet, and voiding into the toilet.
You will often hear the term “challenging behaviour”, which is usually used to refer to unwanted or inappropriate behaviour. Though all of those terms are not necessarily unacceptable, I believe it is more clear to use the terms ‘unwanted behaviour’, to refer to a behaviour that needs to be stopped or reduced due to its impact on others or on the person emitting that behaviour, and ‘wanted behaviour’ for a behaviour that needs to be taught.
Before we decide on whether a behaviour falls into the unwanted behaviour or wanted behaviour categories, you need to remember that for a behaviour to be chosen for modification it needs to be established why that behaviour is unwanted. That is, who is it who does not want that behaviour to be emitted, and who decided it needs to be modified and why? For example, when a person tugs on other peoples clothing to let them know they need to use the toilet, as they cannot speak or sign – is this an unwanted behaviour? It could be argued either way, but the criteria that should be used is:
Does this behaviour cause harm to the person concerned (including does it stigmatise them)?
OR
Does this behaviour cause harm to others?
If the answer is yes to either of these questions, then it is likely that it is an unwanted behaviour that needs to be modified.
For a behaviour to be identified as a wanted behaviour the identifying criteria is not so strict. The questions that should be asked can be any of the following:
Is this behaviour needed to increase the person’s independence?
Is this behaviour needed to increase their communication ability?
Is this behaviour needed to reduce the chance of that person, or another person, becoming injured?
If the answer is yes to any of these questions, or related questions, then the behaviour would be categorised as a wanted behaviour and so could be selected for teaching to the individual.
Focus on autism: What about repetitive behaviour or rituals, are they ok? Rituals or repetitive behaviours are a common trait in people with autism and in fact make up one of the diagnostic criteria for autism (“Restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests or activities …” American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. 5th ed. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Association; 2013). These behaviours may include ritualistic type actions such as needing to tap a doorframe three times before going through a doorway, or always insisting they are the one who turns the doorhandle of a door rather than someone else. It can also be seen in the compulsion to have …
For a lot more information on behaviour and autism, get your copy of Behaviour Skills for Parents, Teachers and Support People – A focus on Autism, by Trevor Lewis