One Simple Way to Improve Participation

Do you struggle to get children to participate in certain activities? Do you find it hard to engage children in non-preferred or difficult tasks? Perhaps the children do not follow your directions or do not remain on task. This makes it difficult for children to learn new skills to participate in activities of daily living, academic tasks or social interactions. Many times, positive reinforcement is used and children are rewarded after they complete the task appropriately.

Have you ever considered trying to avoid these behaviors before they even start? One simple way to improve participation is to offer children choices to prevent non-compliance. This helps to avoid the behaviors before they occur. Research indicates that by offering interventions before the behaviors occur may help to limit avoidance of tasks and interfering behaviors. In addition, it helps to promote an environment where children are ready to learn.

Offering children choices before the task has been shown to reduce disruptive behaviors, increase task engagement and decrease the amount of time to complete the task. Although there is a risk that children may avoid less-preferred tasks. Recent research in the Journal of Special Education evaluated the effects of choice of a less preferred task sequence (i.e. wash dishes, communicate with classmate, complete puzzle, etc) on noncompliance, task engagement, and duration to complete activities across two individuals with autism spectrum disorder and one participant with a speech and language impairment. The results indicated the following:

choice of task sequence effectively reduced noncompliance in two participants.
choice was initially effective although treatment effects failed to replicate in the third participant.
task engagement was greater during choice than the no-choice condition for only one participant.
there were no changes in duration to complete tasks.

The researchers concluded that providing choice before a low-preferred task sequence was effective at reducing noncompliant behavior.

Reference: Kautz, M. E., DeBar, R. M., Vladescu, J. C., & Graff, R. B. (2017). A Further Evaluation of Choice of Task Sequence. The Journal of Special Education, 0022466917735655.

Are you looking for other strategies besides providing choices to help improve compliance in the classroom? Typical Classroom Sensory-Based Problem Behaviors & Suggested Therapeutic Interventions offers many suggestions for therapeutic interventions for 12 different problem behavior categories.