Child Psychology | ABC’s of Student Behavior
 

When educators and psychologists speak about the ABCs of behavior, they’re talking about how to change behavior, not spell a word.

ABC -- Antecedent, Behavior, Consequence -- is a behavior-modification strategy often used to understand why kids act in a certain way and to help guide the student to a desired outcome.

It can be used both to extinguish an undesirable behavior and to foster good behavior.

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ABC falls under the umbrella of applied behavior analysis. To understand ABC, let’s look at what the three terms mean and why each one is important.

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Antecedent

The antecedent refers to the action, event or circumstance that occurred before the behavior and is also known as the “setting event.”

The antecedent is anything that might spark the behavior.

It may be a request from a teacher, the presence of another student or even a change in the environment.

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Behavior

The behavior refers to what the student does and is sometimes referred to as “the behavior of interest” or “target behavior.”

The behavior is either pivotal (it leads to other undesirable behaviors), a problem behavior that creates a danger for the student or others or a distracting behavior that removes the child from the instructional setting or prevents other students from receiving instruction.

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Consequence

The consequence is an action or response that follows the behavior. The “consequence” is the outcome of the behavior, it’s something the child either gets or avoids.

In other words, the consequence is the result that the student gets from her or his behavior.

If a child screams or throws a tantrum, for example, the consequence may involve the adult (the parent or teacher) withdrawing from the area or having the student withdraw from the area, such as taking a timeout.

 
 

Examples

The table illustrates examples of how a teacher, instructional assistant, or other adult might use ABC in an educational setting.

 

 

Antecedent

Behavior Consequence
The student is given a bin filled with parts to assemble and asked to assemble the parts. The student throws the bin with all the parts onto the floor. The student is taken to timeout until he calms down. The student later picks up the pieces before he is allowed to return to classroom activities.
The teacher asks a student to come to the board to move a magnetic marker. The student bangs her head on the tray of her desk. The teacher goes to the student and attempts to redirect and soothe her with a preferred item (such as a favored toy).
The teacher tells the student, “Clean up the blocks.” The student screams, “No! I won’t clean up.” The instructional assistant ignores the child’s behavior and presents the student with another activity.

 

The key to ABC is that it gives parents, psychologists and educators a systematic and holistic way to look at behavior. Understanding the function of a behavior is the best way to understand how to change that behavior.

 

 

 

ABCs in Practice
 

When educators handle behavioral divergences, they tend to frame their thinking around these ABCs.

Antecedents

First, we consider the antecedents (triggers) that led up to the behavior. There are a million possibilities, of course, but here are two common examples.

If four-year-old Susie is having a Monday morning tantrum, the teacher might consider whether she is hungry, tired or frustrated -- the three biggest antecedents of tantrums.

 
 

 

If five-year-old Timmy pushes his friend on the playground, the teachers will try to understand whether Timmy was trying to get to something before his friend could get it or if Timmy pushed his friend out of anger.

 

Behavior

We also focus on the specific actions we want to change. If a sophomore student tends to grab toys and doesn’t let anyone else in the room use them, we focus on teaching the specific actions involved in sharing:

•Handing items to someone else;

•Looking around to see the other toy choices nearby, and:

•Saying please and thank you.

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If a senior student throws his hands up in frustration every time the teacher asks him to read a book together, we keep the attention on putting in good effort.

In the moment, we don’t focus on his ability to actually read or sound out the words we’re reading.

 

Consequence

Finally, we intervene by changing the consequences of an action.

If we need to temporarily allow a child to gather her thoughts with a time out as a result of an inappropriate action, we may ask the student to sit briefly in the room facing the group but separate from the main circle.

We always pair time out with “time-in” -- positive together time that reinforces the pleasure of working nicely with the group.

 

 

 

We also rely on when/then statements: “When we put away our work trays, then we can go outside to play.” This is an easily-followed direction and a positive reinforcement for good behavior.

The key is to enforce limits, rules and expectations consistently, so everyone knows what happens when we behave in a certain way.

There are times when a non-response by a teacher is also an appropriate consequence. If a child waits to roll her eyes until the teacher is looking, then we know the point of the behavior is to get attention.

 

 
 

 

In this case, ignoring the look can be effective. If the eye roll is not rewarded with the consequence the student desires, she will eventually learn that eye-rolling is simply an effective way of getting attention.

One thing we are careful not to do is give in to an undesired behavior, even when it might be easier in the short term.

 

 
 

We know that rewarding an inappropriate behavior only sets up the child to repeated the undesired behavior down the road.

We are also quick to praise good behavior whenever we see it because the ABCs apply here, too.

When a child gets positive reinforcement as a consequence for doing something right, she or he is more likely to do that again!

 
 

 

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