Ethics & Supervision
A BCBA supervising trainees must provide feedback that is this.
What is timely and behavior-specific?
This indirect assessment gathers information through interviews and rating scales.
What is an indirect FBA?
A neutral stimulus acquires reinforcing properties through pairing with backup reinforcers. It becomes this type of reinforcer.
What is a conditioned reinforcer?
A behavior occurring more often in the presence of a specific stimulus demonstrates this.
What is stimulus control?
This schedule produces high steady responding with little postreinforcement pause.
What is variable ratio?
A BCBA enters into a friendship and therapeutic relationship simultaneously with a client. This is called this.
What is a multiple relationship?
A synthesized contingency analysis combines multiple contingencies identified through this interview-based process.
What is IISCA/open-ended interview assessment?
This behavioral process occurs when reinforcement for one response increases responding for similar responses.
What is response generalization?
Reinforcing responses in the presence of one stimulus and not another is called this process.
What is discrimination training?
This schedule reinforces only responses occurring after a specific amount of time has elapsed.
What is differential reinforcement of low rates (DRL) or interval schedule?
According to supervision best practices, competency-based training should include instruction, modeling, rehearsal, and this final component.
What is feedback?
Problem behavior maintained by escape from demands persists because task removal functions as this.
What is negative reinforcement?
Two behaviors are reinforced on different schedules. Over time, responding shifts toward the behavior producing a higher relative rate of reinforcement. This phenomenon is described by this principle.
What is the matching law?
A learner responds correctly only when a specific therapist gives instructions despite training with others. This reflects faulty this.
What is stimulus control/stimulus overselectivity?
This schedule delivers reinforcement independent of responding and is often used to reduce problem behavior maintained by attention.
What is noncontingent reinforcement (NCR)?
A supervisee repeatedly fails to implement procedures with integrity despite feedback and retraining. Ethically, the BCBA must do this.
What is restrict, suspend, or terminate supervision/client responsibilities as appropriate?
If behavior occurs in multiple test conditions but not in the control condition, this pattern suggests this.
What is undifferentiated or multiply maintained behavior?
A behavior persists even after reinforcement is discontinued, but only after a history of intermittent reinforcement. This persistence is best explained by this behavioral principle.
What is resistance to extinction due to intermittent reinforcement?
A BCBA teaches a client to say “hello” when an adult waves and says, “Hi.” After several weeks, the client says “hello” every time they see any person enter a room, regardless of whether the person greeted them. Which concept best explains what has occurred?
What is stimulus overgeneralization (or faulty stimulus control)?
A learner receives reinforcement after every 5 correct responses, but the number of responses required changes unpredictably across sessions (sometimes 3, sometimes 8, sometimes 5). This schedule is best described as this.
What is a variable ratio (VR) schedule of reinforcement?
A BCBA inherits a case from another provider and immediately implements a more restrictive behavior reduction procedure because the client engages in severe aggression. The BCBA has no baseline data, no functional assessment, and has not attempted reinforcement-based alternatives because the school insists immediate action is necessary. List the TWO major ethical violations.
What are failure to conduct appropriate assessment before treatment and failure to recommend least restrictive, evidence-based procedures?
A BCBA conducts a functional analysis for a client who engages in property destruction. Results show high rates of behavior in the escape condition and near-zero rates in attention and tangible conditions. However, the BCBA notices that during the escape condition, the client often begins destroying materials only after the therapist repeats the demand 2–3 times, but rarely responds during the first presentation of the demand. In addition, problem behavior is most likely to occur when tasks are novel or when error correction procedures are introduced.
What is the most likely behavioral function, and what does the within-session pattern suggest about stimulus control of the behavior?
What is escape-maintained behavior, and the pattern suggests that problem behavior is under conditional stimulus control of increased task difficulty/response effort (i.e., higher EO for escape is evoked after repeated demands or errors, indicating demand accumulation or sensitivity to task difficulty rather than immediate demand presentation alone).
A learner responds more strongly to stimuli that share only some features of the training stimulus, while failing to respond to the exact training stimulus itself. This pattern reflects this failure in stimulus control.
What is faulty stimulus control (overgeneralization or stimulus overselectivity)?
A BCBA notices that a learner correctly identifies the letter “B” during table work at 100% accuracy. However, when the same letter appears in books, on signs, or on worksheets with different fonts, responding drops substantially. What intervention would most likely improve stimulus control across settings and materials?
What is training with multiple exemplars (programming for generalization)?
A client's behavior is maintained on an FR 10 schedule. To make reinforcement less predictable and increase resistance to extinction, a BCBA changes the schedule while maintaining approximately the same overall rate of reinforcement. Which schedule change would be most appropriate?
What is changing from FR 10 to VR 10?