Eating items that are not food...

• What is Pica?
• Research
• What they used to do about it?
• What to do about it now?
• Functional Analysis
• Preference

What is Pica?
Pica is basically the consumption of non-edible items.  Some children like to place certain object in their mouth, because they like the texture which is a brain stimulation for them that excites their senses.
 
Research
Piazza et al. (1998)  was a research article about Pica exploring the reasons for Pica, to find out what it was controlled by, and possible treatment for it.

What they used to do about it?
In the past, treatment for this was by using DRO, as mentioned previously in my blog, it's when attention is  presented to other appropriate behaviors (not necessarily related or in the same category as the behavior) that is not the problem behavior.  You can look at the glossary for further definition.  So when a child would place a rock in her mouth, would be blocked, but no other attention was given towards that, such as giving her something else to eat or play with or shows gestures of approval or disapproval.  Instead, every time she/he showed desirable behavior the parent would give all the attention towards that behavior.

What to do about it now?
Now, after the function of the behavior is analyzed.  The parent, which is informed by the behavior analysis would block them and then replace the stimulation with a more appropriate object (like food, chew tube, etc.). (1) to supply the oral stimulation the child wants and (2) to teach them an alternative appropriate behavior.  But the parent will not only provide the new stimulation only after the inappropriate behavior.  They have to be continuously be introduced to it, to teach them that they use "this" instead of "that". 

Functional Analysis
But as the study has suggested, you can't just give the child anything, a functional analysis must be done by a professional BCBA to find out why they are doing it, what causes them to do it, and what reaction that we provide keeps it going.  Because if you want the job done, you have to do with right.  You have to understand the reason for the behavior. Plus, some of the children use pica not only as a stimulus but to get something else they want.  Such as attention or another substance.  This can be done through you giving them attention immediately after the undesired behavior occurs, and you give your child a drink after you tell them to expel what's in their mouth.  So, they have learned to do this to get a "drink".   All behaviors happen for a reason.

Preference
In addition, you can't just replace the behavior with just anything, becasue not all kids like the same thing, and you must find items that strongly have a power over them compared to others that don't.  And of this a professional BCBA would do a preference assessment to determine what works best.  These steps help insure a treatment plan with less trails and errors to effectively take care of the problem behavior.