Fitting_App1

time

inattention

T

Test

We are going to redirect him away from his behavior to alternative educational activities. We will make the educational activities as engaging as possible and provide very little if any attention to the sterepthy as we have defined it.

There are competing environmental stimuli that may be problematic when they are more stimulating than the educational program. We will try to eliminate those that we can from the environment.

1.Ignore the statement if you have already responded to it

2. Redirect with a visual to talk about something else or to a relaxation strategy

If ignoring just isn’t going to cut it, and especially if the behavior is tied to having difficulty finding a topic to talk about to get attention, try using a visual to redirect the person to talk about something else. For instance, if a child can only talk about Toy Story, show a visual that says, “Talk about another movie” or “I want to talk about something else.” I suggest using a visual because it keeps you from attending verbally to the behavior and because the individual can’t argue with the visual. Think of it as a polite way to make your eye rolling or other more subtle facial expression at the 15th time you have talked about Minecraft today more clear to the individual. You are giving information about what he or she should do instead. You can use a picture or write out the words as a way to redirect, but the picture is a tangible item that you can leave behind when you walk away from the conversation if he or she continues to perseverate.

You can also redirect to a calming strategy to try to relieve anxiety if you think that is a possible function of the perseveration. For instance, if your student has talked about going to the dentist 20 times today, perhaps it is because he is anxious about it. This would be a good time to use a visual that says, “take 3 deep breaths” or “squeeze some putty.” Some good visuals for this can be found in my anxiety post on A Special Sparkle.

3. Direct the student to his / her schedule with a time he can talk about the topic
Schedule a time that the student can talk about his or her favorite topic and then put that time on his or her visual schedule. This way, he or she learns to talk about it at an appropriate time and you can use the schedule to redirect (e.g., “When can we talk about Minecraft? Check your schedule. OK, we have to wait for pack-up time for that then.”). Now clearly if this doesn’t work you have to ignore and continue to redirect by pointing to the schedule, but you know that there is a time when he or she can talk about it and that you have given him or her the information about it. I had a colleague who had a group of students who all used to talk about Power Rangers constantly. Rather than constantly fighting it, she scheduled a time at the end of the day and put it on the calendar that the class could talk about their favorite topics. She then used that time to write her homenotes while they talked to each other about their perseverations. Whenever they talked about it at other times, she told them to check their schedules and they quickly learned when it was allowed. You can also reinforce following those redirections to help them be successful at first.

4. Set a Limit in a Concrete Way

Finally, this is probably my favorite way of handling verbal perseverations. Set a limit. It could be a time limit with a timer. He could have 5 minutes to talk about something that interests him and when the timer goes off it’s time to move on.

If you have a student who really likes lists or likes checking things off lists, use a list of people he or she can talk to about the topic. Then each time he talks about Minecraft with a person, he has to cross that person off his list. So, if he comes up to me to talk about Minecraft, I would direct him to look at his list. If he has already talked to me about it today, and my name is crossed off, then he has to either talk to someone else he hasn’t talked about it with today or talk to me about something else. And after all, isn’t that what we do when we really want to talk to someone? We just read social signals better.
Another option is to give the student a set of tickets with the number of times he can talk about his favorite topic. For instance, if he has 5 tickets to talk about movies, he has to give up a ticket each time he does. If he can’t give me a ticket because he ran out, he has to talk about something else.

With all of these options it’s important to make sure that you are teaching alternative topics of conversation and possibly anxiety-reducing strategies to replace the perseveration. But while those are being taught, these are strategies that can help address the behavior. And to help you try them, I have included 2 freebies. First, you can download the redirection visuals above. Download it here. Then, you can also download a set of editable talk tickets for which you can fill-in the topic of perseveration for the individual student. You can download the PowerPoint file here.

What strategies do you use to manage verbal perseveration in your classroom? Please share in the comments. The more ideas we have the more effective everyone can be for our students.

bootleg reinforcement

Be consistent. Collect data. Provide reinforcement. All behavior change can take time

Hard time generlaizing to the natural environment. Reinforcement not as valuable as the behavior.

Client may still choose his stereotype.

competing reinforcer

We would block the vocal stereotypy by interrupting it and having him engage in 3 consecutive correct vocal tasks.

It is time consuming and requires constant supervision of the client.

I would tell them that anytime Cyrus begins stereotypy we are going to interrupt by delivering 3 known instructions and then redirect him to the task at hand. He will receive social reinforcement for engaging in the current task.

The interruption may not be effective or social reinforcement may not compete with the automatic reinforcement.

With this procedure, we would plan to run different conditions to identify a powerful competing stimulus that reduces the stereotypy by at least 80%. Once this is identified, we will plan to provide this to the learner non contingently. This competing stimulus could then be provided to the learner at critical times of the day so that he is able to attend his educational program.

The biggest barrier to this procedure is identifying a truly powerful competing stimulus.