What Alternatives Are Available?What Alternatives Are Available?
Behavior is an individual's attempt to grapple with the demands of the environment within which he or she lives. Viewed from this perspective, the role of behavioral programming is not to "control" the dangerous or disruptive behavior, but rather to assist the individual both to learn more adaptive responses and to gain the skills necessary to function successfully. There exists a range of proven and effective techniques to accomplish these objectives.
Known as positive approaches, these methods:
Attempt to understand the meaning a behavior has for a person.Offer the person a positive alternative.Utilize non-intrusive intervention techniques.Offer strategies which have been validated and are intended to be used in integrated community settings.The use of positive approaches implies recognition of the fact that, although some behaviors may appear so, no behaviors are "maladaptive". All behaviors are adaptive for the person performing them. Behaviors are learned as a response to a particular environment or in an effort to accomplish what an individual needs or wants. Positive strategies for changing behavior work equally rapidly, work with behaviors that are equally severe and are at least as effective as aversive strategies.
An important difference between positive strategies and aversive strategies is that positive strategies make desirable responses more probable (aversive strategies attempt to make negative responses less probable).
As desirable behaviors increase, problem behaviors, including aggression, self-injury, tantrums, and property destruction become less probable. When individuals with disabilities are treated in ways that validate their worth and when their attempts to communicate through their behavior are responded to positively, they have less need to behave in ways that are dangerous or that challenge those around them. One author states:
Positive reinforcement does control behavior, no less than coercion does. But it can teach us new ways to act, or support what we have already learned, without creating coercion's characteristic by-products - violence, aggression, oppression, depression, emotional and intellectual rigidity, and hatred.
Why then are positive approaches not used exclusively? There is a range of possible reasons. One is that positive approaches take more planning, time, and forethought. Only the astute teacher, parent, staff person, or psychologist, willing and able to discover the meaning of a behavior for a particular individual -- and then to design positive strategies to address those meanings, will achieve behavior change that maintains over time.
Another reason may be that aversive techniques are simpler, quicker, more easily measurable, and therefore, lend themselves more readily to research protocols. A quality, positive behavioral program is always multi-faceted. Such a program might include various methods for increasing an individual's ability to communicate or otherwise impact on his or her environment, environmental adaptations, a reinforcement schedule, and instructions to caregivers for ways to react if unwanted behaviors occur. Compared to sprays of water, squirts of ammonia, or volts of electric shock, the many aspects of a positive program are likely going to be more difficult to quantify. Additionally, because these programs use many approaches concurrently, it is more challenging to isolate which aspect(s) of the program led to the change in behavior.
Many researchers' careers have been built on the design and implementation of programs using aversive methods. These researchers perpetuate a body of written work on the use of these techniques. Researchers with a reputation for producing publishable work are more likely to be able to secure additional private and public funding. "Governments, private foundations, and other funding bodies have been slow to support research into the alternatives to punishment". For this reason, and because these techniques are newer, more complex, and less familiar, the number of publications on positive interventions lags behind that for aversive strategies.