Self-injurious Behavior of Children with Autism in Vietnam: Across Sectional Study

Abstract

This study explored self-injurious behavior (SIB) of autistic children in Vietnam through a
cross-sectional design. 60 informants, including 57 parents and 3 caregivers completed the
questionnaire on problem behavior consisting of aggression, self-injury, stereotyping,
property destruction, other problem behaviorsand theirfunctions. Results revealed that
children experienced all mentioned problem behaviors, especially self-injurious behavior.
The topographies of self-injurious behavior of the children included head-hitting, headscratching,
head-banging, hair-pulling, face-hitting, face-puncturing with a pen,earscratching,
lip-picking, hand-biting, hand-scratching, hand-pinching, and belly-scratching.
The most common area of self-injurious behavior is the head. The functions of these problem
behaviorswere expressed in four types (social positive reinforcement, social negative
reinforcement, automatic positive reinforcement and automatic negative reinforcement).
Social positive reinforcement appeared as a prominent function. Out of these 57 children,
21of themwho were autistic with self-injurious behavior went through a functional
assessment (FA) in which the four conditions known as attention, tangible items, escape from
task/activities, automatic stimulation were tested. The results of functional analysis (FA)
further indicated the correspondence between the FAST-R and FA outcome on function of
problem behavior, especially self-injurious behavior. Results also showed that the prominent
function of these self-injurious behaviors wassocial function. It means self-injurious
behaviors usually occur within a condition of social interaction, especially, in this present
study, in the tangible condition. The antecedent of self-injurious behavior is the removal of
tangibles (e.g. food, preferred items). This paper contributes to our knowledge of selfinjurious
behavior of children with autism in Vietnam where empirical research of this field
was still very rare.