Reducing Self Injurious Behaviour in a Child with Severe Learning Difficulties: Enhancing predictability and structure

This article describes an attempt to reduce the level of self injurious behaviour (SIB) exhibited by a child with severe learning difficulties. The intervention addressed the degree to which the curriculum demands were made more explicit through TEACCH techniques (Mesibov et al, 1989). Whilst this approach has been commonly used to organise the environment for autistic children, its applicability to other groups is not widely documented. In evaluating the intervention, attention is drawn to the difficulty in drawing conclusions from interventions conducted within the complex environment of the classroom.