The Effects of Sensory Integration Interventions on Automatic Reinforcement Behaviors in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Single Subject Study

Abstract

Background Identifying successful interventions for children with persistent behaviors maintained by automatic reinforcement is quite challenging.Methods This study analyzed the effects of interventions based on sensory integration (SI) on the automatic reinforcement behavior of two preschool boys with Autism Spectrum Disorders(ASD). First, we performed a functional analysis to determine whether the challenging behaviors were maintained by automatic reinforcement. Next, two sensory integration intervention assessments were used to identify the sensory disorders of the participants’ automatic reinforcement behaviors. Finally, this study implemented a sensory integration-based intervention and an adopted A-B-A-B design to verify the effectiveness of the intervention.Results The functional analysis results revealed that the participants’ target behaviors were maintained through automatic reinforcement. The findings suggested that the sensory integration-based intervention, which was designed depending on the results of the functional analysis and sensory integration assessments, positively affected the levels of automatic reinforcement behavior.Conclusions This study demonstrated that an intervention strategy based on the sensory integration theory had considerable effects on the automatic reinforcement behaviors of two preschool children.In the future, parents and professional therapists could apply this model for improving sensory integration disorders in children with ASD.

The effect of the home environment on children with autism spectrum disorder

“…Therefore, it may be concluded that the regulatory behaviors they use are for the purpose of managing the information that is received from the senses. These regulatory behaviors may include clapping their hands, covering their ears to block out hearing, bouncing up and down, panicking, withdrawing when touched, avoiding specific textures and odors, and/or waving their fingers in front of their eyes (Pi et al, 2023). On the basis of these complicated sensory processing issues, there emerges a series of explainable cause‐effect correlations about how toddlers manage with their environment and how they stumble upon challenging behaviors (Iarocci & McDonald, 2006).…”