PEC

• Emotional disturbance


  One of the disability categories in IDEA under which a child is eligible to receive special education services
• Characteristics of emotional disturbance (IDEA definition)

  • An inability to learn which cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, and health factors
  • An inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers
  • Inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances
  • A general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression
  • A tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems
• Emotional disturbance includes schizophrenia. The term does not apply to children who are socially maladjusted, unless it is determined that they have an emotional disturbance
• Conditions that must be met for a condition to be considered an emotional disturbance (IDEA)


  • Chronicity ("over a long period of time")
  • Severity ("to a marked degree")
  • Difficulty in school ("adversely affects educational performance")
• CCBD definition of emotional or behavioral disorder


  A disability that is characterized by emotional or behavioral responses in school programs so different from appropriate age, cultural, or ethnic norms that the responses adversely affect educational performance, including academic, social, vocational or personal skills; more than a temporary, expected response to stressful events in the environment; consistently exhibited in two different settings, at least one of which is school-related; and unresponsive to direct intervention in general education, or the condition of the child is such that general education interventions would be insufficient
• Types of emotional or behavioral disorders that the CCBD definition includes

  • Schizophrenic disorder
  • Affective disorder
  • Anxiety disorder
  • Other sustained disorder of conduct or adjustment
• Primary characteristics of children with emotional or behavioral disorders

  • Behavior that falls significantly beyond the norms of their cultural and age group on two dimensions: externalizing (aggression, acting out) and internalizing (anxiety, social withdrawal)
  • Either pattern of abnormal behavior has adverse effects on a child's academic achievement and social relationships
• Externalizing behaviors of children with emotional or behavioral disorders

  • Get out of their seats
  • Yell, talk out, and curse
  • Disturb peers
  • Hit or fight
  • Ignore the teacher
  • Complain
  • Verbally abuse adults & other kids
  • Argue excessively
  • Steal
  • Lie
  • Destroy property
  • Do not comply with directions
  • Have temper tantrums
• Internalizing behaviors of children with emotional or behavioral disorders

  • Rarely play with other kids their own age
  • Lack the social skills needed to make friends and have fun
  • Often retreat into daydreams and fantasies
  • Some are extremely fearful of certain things without reason (i.e., phobia)
  • Frequently complain of being sick or hurt, and go into deep bouts of depression
• Internalizing behaviors limits a child's chances to take part in the school and learn from the typical school and leisure activities that other participate and enjoy
• Children who exhibit the internalizing behaviors characteristic of some types of anxiety and mood disorders may be less disturbing to classroom teachers than are antisocial children
• The severe anxiety and mood disorders that some children experience not only cause pervasive impairments in their education but also threaten their very existence. Without identification and effective treatment, the extreme emotional disorders of some children can lead to self-inflicted injury or even death from substance abuse, starvation, or suicidal behavior
• Academic outcomes of students with emotional or behavioral disorders

  • Two-thirds cannot pass competency exams for their grade level
  • They are more likely to receive grades of D and F than are students with other disabilities
  • Achievement deficits tend to worsen as students grow older
  • They have the highest absenteeism rate of any group of students
  • Only 1 in 3 leaves high school with a diploma or certificate of completion, compared to 50% of all students with disabilities and 76% of all youth in the general population
  • An alarming 60% drop out of high school
• As a result of this lack of engagement with the curriculum, students with emotional or behavioral disorders may fail to learn
• When teachers who are unaware of the student's academic skills deficits or who cannot address the deficits, a student with emotional or behavioral disorders might receive ineffective instruction and the worsens the problem
• Many students with emotional or behavioral disorders also have learning disabilities and/or language delays, which compound their difficulties in mastering academic skills and content
• IQ test


  Measures how well a child performs certain tasks at the time and place the test is administered
• Many more children with emotional or behavioral disorders score in the slow learner or mild intellectual disabilities range on IQ tests than do children without disabilities
• The average IQ score of students with emotional or behavioral disorders is around 96
• Students with emotional or behavioral disorders are on task only about 60% or less of the time, compared to 85% for students without disabilities
• Off-task and disruptive behavior frequently produces teacher attention, which can have the unintended effect of reinforcing the undesired behavior
• Students with emotional or behavioral disorders are often rejected by peers and experience great difficulty in making and keeping friends
• Students with behavioral disorders reported lower levels of empathy toward others, participation in fewer curricular activities, less frequent contacts with friends, and lower-quality relationships than were reported by their peers without disabilities
• Gender differences in emotional or behavioral disorders

  • More than three-fourths of children identified for special education because of emotional and behavioral disorders are boys
  • Boys identified as emotionally or behaviorally disordered are likely to have externalizing disorders in the form of antisocial, aggressive behaviors
  • Girls with emotional or behavioral disorders are more likely to show internalizing disorders such as anxiety and social withdrawal
• Biological causes of emotional or behavioral disorders

  • Brain disorders (brain dysgenesis or brain injury)
  • Genetics (certain emotional and behavioral disorders are linked to genetics)
• Environmental causes of emotional or behavioral disorders

  • Home (the relationship children have with their parents, particularly during the early years)
  • School (factors that may contribute to problem behavior)
• Assessment of emotional or behavioral disorders

  Should answer four basic questions concerning special education services: 1) Who might need help? 2) Who really does need help (who is eligible)? 3) What kind of help is needed? 4) Is the help benefiting the student?
• Screening


  The process of differentiating between children who are not likely to be disabled and those who either show signs of behavioral disturbance or seem to be at risk for developing behavior problems
• 3 widely used screening tests

  • Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL)
  • Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale (BERS)
  • Systematic Screening for Behavioral Disorders (SSBD)
• Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL)

  One of the several assessment tools included in the Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment (ASEBA), a widely used and researched collection of checklists and assessment devices. This school-age version comes in teacher report, parent report, and self-report forms and can be used with children ages 6 to 18.
• Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale (BERS)

  Assesses a student's strengths in 52 items across five areas of functioning: interpersonal strengths; family involvement, intrapersonal strengths, school functioning, and affective strengths.
• Systematic Screening for Behavioral Disorders (SSBD)


  Employs a three-step multiple gating screening process for progressively narrowing down the number of children suspected of having serious behavior problems.
• Teacher's report form


  Includes 112 behaviors (e.g., "sudden changes in mood or feelings," "not liked by other pupils") that are rated on a 3-point scale: "not true," "somewhat or sometimes true," or "very true or often true"
• CBCL


  Includes items representing social competencies and adaptive functioning
• Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale (BERS)

  Assesses a student's strengths in 52 items across five areas of functioning: interpersonal strengths; family involvement, intrapersonal strengths, school functioning, and affective strengths
• Data from a strength-based assessment such as the BERS

  • May be used to present positive attributes of students in IEP meetings, as an aid in writing IEP goals and objectives, and as an outcome measure to document a student's progress on strength-related IEP goals and objectives
• Systematic Screening for Behavioral Disorders (SSBD)

  1. Employs a three-step multiple gating screening process for progressively narrowing down the number of children suspected of having serious behavior problems

  2. Gate I: classroom teachers rank order every student in their classrooms according to behavioral profiles on two dimensions: externalizing problems and internalizing problems

  3. Gate II: Critical Events Index. Critical events are behaviors of high salience and concern even if their frequency is low

  4. Gate III: direct and repeated observations during independent seat-work periods in the classroom and on the playground during recess
• Direct Observation and Measurement of Behavior


  The actual behaviors that cause concern about a child are clearly specified and observed in the settings in which they normally occur (e.g., in the classroom, on the playground). Behavior's measurable dimensions include frequency, duration, latency, topography, and magnitude
• Functional Behavioral Assessment (FBA)

  A systematic process for gathering information to understand why a student may be engaging in challenging behavior. Two common functions of problem behavior are: (a) to get something the student wants (positive reinforcement) or (b) to avoid or escape something the student doesn't want (negative reinforcement)
• Indirect Functional Behavior Assessment

  1. Involves asking teachers, parents, and others who know the child well about the circumstances that typically surround the occurrence and nonoccurrence of the problem behavior and the reactions the behavior usually evokes from others

  2. There are numerous published instruments in conducting indirect FBA: structured interview, questionnaire, or checklist and questions about behavioral function