Interventions for escape-motivated behaviour for students without intellectual disability

Schools other than segregated settings enrolling students with special education needs are beginning to use functional assessment as part of the process for developing individualised interventions for students with behaviour problems. Although originally developed with people with intellectual disability, functional assessment is now being applied to students who are developing normally and who exhibit problem behaviour, and to students with emotional and behavioural disorders who do not have an intellectual disability. It has been found, however, that practitioners often have difficulty making use of the information they uncover about the function of the problem behaviour. This paper provides an overview of some of the research on interventions designed to remediate problem behaviour motivated by escape from tasks or people, and describes examples of appropriate interventions that have been shown to be effective. Such examples may be helpful to practitioners who wish to use the results of functional assessment to develop positive and proactive interventions.