Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate how to support patients with severe motor and intellectual disabilities who have been persistently presenting with spitting behaviors since childhood. The study was conducted using applied behavior analysis. There is always something to trigger a behavior before it happens. Hence, we extracted two scenes where a spitting behavior is likely to occur, “when getting into a wheelchair before breakfast" and “when getting into a wheelchair before dinner", and conducted an ABC analysis using a scoring system to assess situations associated with the spitting behavior. According to the results of the ABC analysis, we considered that a spitting behavior was associated with an expression of attention-seeking desire, which is a function of behavioral disorder. Therefore, we conducted interventions such as verbal as well as visual communications and physical contacts through massage and compared the scores before and after these interventions. According to the results, it was revealed that the number of days that they did not show a spitting behavior increased, suggesting that it is important to support patients with behavioral disorder, utilizing the applied behavior analysis.
