Assessment 1: Critical Reflection (Case study scenario – Interoception and positive behavior support)

Student’s Name: Ayushi Nayak

Student’s ID: A00082563

Table of Contents

Introduction

The prime motive of the paper is to critically reflect on the understanding of interoception and self-regulation and self-management difficulties for individuals with challenging behavior. It will identify significant strategies to develop self-regulation skills via interoception for people with trauma. It will analyze prejudices and biases connected to behavioral support in educational and care settings.

Description of challenging behavior and self-regulation

An individual aged 8 years old experienced autism and exhibited challenging behavior. The person named Sam needed an order. The change came overnight. It was found that when his parents opened a cabinet, he closed it. He could not tolerate the door being open. It causes his parents to face problems and uncontrollability for him. Sam become anxious and acted out if the order was not properly maintained. He faced difficulty in self-regulating his behavior and demonstrate aggressive behavior due to autism. Sam lived with autism which lead to a lack of control in his behavior and exhibited challenging behavior which could not be tolerated. Moreover, this type of challenging behavior has occurred in the context of self-regulating difficulties because the person with autism might be feeling unhealthy or unhappy and experienced problems in speaking or communicating something to others. In this case, Sam with autism exhibit behavior that his parents find challenging. It needs interoception to control or manage emotions. It is referred to the ability of an individual to control and assist in expressing their own emotional wants, emotions, needs and thoughts (Nicholson et al., 2018). Self-regulation enables autistic individuals to engage in learning activities. Interoception is considered somatic awareness and connected with self-regulation to raise awareness of emotional condition (Mul, Stagg, Herbelin & Aspell, 2018).

Identification of interoception strategies for individual with autism

Some experts have argued that autism includes poor introspection and people with autism face difficulty in recognizing their own emotions and controlling their own feelings and thoughts (Cibrian et al., 2020). One of the contemporary strategies for a person with autism to develop self-regulation via interoception is ignoring the challenging behavior which might at first increase the aggressive behavior among the individual but later it would decrease the likelihood of engaging in challenging behavior. Creating a more successful environment is another strategy to change the challenging behavior of an individual. It is effective to integrate ways to decrease anxiety and frustration and raise self-understanding (Charitaki, Soulis & Tyropoli, 2021). It is also essential to try to avoid conditions that act as a trigger for challenging behavior. Besides this, increasing interoceptive awareness can be helpful in developing self-regulation among people with autism or trauma. In order to enhance interoceptive awareness, it is required to assist children or adults with autism think about their bodies.

Moreover, children can develop interoceptive awareness and start to understand messages sent by the body through interactive activities such as body check charts and many more (The Rainbow Clinic. 2020). Over time, children could utilize information to respond to sensations independently as well as properly and enhance self-regulation. Occupational therapy assessment is an effective strategy to help a person struggling with difficulties in self-regulation and interoception. Occupational therapists assist an individual with autism in improving their daily lives through increased awareness and independence. However, interoception can be considered the key to interpreting unexplained behavior or problems with bodily functions. Sensory diets can be created by occupational therapists which would be used as a strategy to help an individual with autism to develop interoception and thereby, build self-regulation. Sensory diets can assist in increasing body awareness among individuals. Meditation and mindfulness can be used as strategies to make a person relax and build self-regulation along with self-awareness. Improved communication and social understanding can also lead to a reduction of anxiety and less challenging behavior.

Application of interoception teaching with the scenario

The strategies identified above can be effectively applied in the described scenario. Behavior support might help children or adults with autism develop necessary skills and manage challenging behavior and increase the ability to control emotions and feelings. Effective communication with Sam can help his parents understand his behavior so that they could provide enough behavior support to him to overcome such behavior and understand himself. Visiting an occupational therapist can help parents of Sam to understand the reason behind such behavior and put effort into developing his tolerance for flexibility and using positive rewards. With the application of such strategies, he could return to a flexible self and adopt positive and self-regulating behavior. Along with this, sensory diets can be developed by the occupational therapists for Sam to help him develop self-regulation skills and interoception. In this case, an operational therapy program is considered efficient for building self-regulation and interoception.

How own beliefs extended, reinforced or challenged

My own beliefs regarding an individual with interoceptive support needs extending and reinforced as a subject. It is identified that interoception refers to the capability to sense the internal condition of the body; for example, to correctly recognize sensations like pain, hunger and thirst. Interoceptive sensibility is mainly concerned with the self-reported beliefs of a person. It is believed that interoception can be improved among people with autism easily which has been challenged since interoceptive awareness can be difficult to build by using different ways like heavy work activities, breathing exercises, mindfulness and yoga and many more. Through this subject, I have developed an understanding of challenging behavior and efficient responses to them. For example, a child with autism is showing challenging behavior to gain attention, then ignoring such behavior can reduce the possibility further. Furthermore, ignoring requests, behaving in improper ways and headbanging and behaving aggressively are some of the examples of challenging behavior learned which can be changed or reduced through education, support and therapies (Challenging behavior, 2022). Occupational therapists, psychologists, GP and applied behavior analysis can help in increasing social skills and improving communication and as a result, managing behavior.

Conclusion

The paper concludes that people with autism exhibit challenging behavior to teachers, relatives and friends. Different strategies can be used to develop self-awareness and interoception such as occupational therapy programs, enhancing communication, increasing social skills, and many more.

References

Challenging behaviour: autistic children and teenagers . (2022). Retrieved 22 March 2022, from https://raisingchildren.net.au/autism/behaviour/understanding-behaviour/challenging-behaviour-asd

Charitaki, G., Soulis, S. G., & Tyropoli, R. (2021). Academic Self-Regulation in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Principal Components Analysis. International Journal of Disability,Development and Education, 68(1), 26-45. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Garyfalia-Charitaki/publication/331982556_Academic_Self-Regulation_in_Autism_Spectrum_Disorder_A_Principal_Components_Analysis/links/5f653316a6fdcc00862d0d78/Academic-Self-Regulation-in-Autism-Spectrum-Disorder-A-Principal-Components-Analysis.pdf

Cibrian, F. L., Lakes, K. D., Tavakoulnia, A., Guzman, K., Schuck, S., & Hayes, G. R. (2020, April). Supporting self-regulation of children with ADHD using wearables: Tensions and design challenges. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-13). https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3313831.3376837

Interoception, Autism And The Importance Of Body Awareness – The Rainbow Clinic. (2020). Retrieved 22 March 2022, from https://rainbowclinic.com.au/interoception-autism-and-the-importance-of-body-awareness/

Mul, C. L., Stagg, S. D., Herbelin, B., & Aspell, J. E. (2018). The feeling of me feeling for you: Interoception, alexithymia and empathy in autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 48(9), 2953-2967. https://arro.anglia.ac.uk/id/eprint/702897/1/Article%20JADD%20Mar18%20ARRO.pdf

Nicholson, T. M., Williams, D. M., Grainger, C., Christensen, J. F., Calvo-Merino, B., & Gaigg, S. B. (2018). Interoceptive impairments do not lie at the heart of autism or alexithymia. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 127(6), 612. https://psycnet.apa.org/journals/abn/127/6/612.pdf