Using Time-Out to Manage Temper Tantrums in Pre-School Special Education

Abstract

Temper tantrums are common behavior in pre-school classrooms. The purpose of this study was to describe if the use of time-out had an impact on the temper tantrums of special needs preschoolers. The type of time-out used in this study was contingent time-out. Over the course of a series of months, behavioral data on tantrums including the antecedent, behavior, and consequence were recorded. Each tantrum exhibited by the subjects received a score that rated the severity. A rubric for describing tantrums was designed by the researcher. This was an ethnographic case study, the results for each subject including progress or lack thereof and rubric scores comparison are discussed. For each subject, the tantrum frequency and rubric score decreased over time. For one subject tantrums stopped, but then started again without a clear reason.