Radical Behaviorism & Foundations
This philosophical stance, pioneered by B.F. Skinner, includes private events (like thoughts and feelings) within the scope of behavior science, treating them as function-based rather than mentalistic.
What is Radical Behaviorism?
A client learns to navigate a computer program. When a specific pop-up appears, it signals that pressing "Enter" will crash the system. The pop-up serves as this specific type of stimulus.
What is an $S^{\Delta}$ (S-delta) for reinforcement (or an $S^{DP}$ / $S^D$ for punishment)?
During a traditional Iwata-style FA, this condition serves as the control condition because it provides a highly enriched environment with free attention and toys, and no demands.
What is the Play (or Control) condition?
A child smells smoke, says "Smoke!", and a caregiver looks toward the kitchen. This verbal operant is under the functional control of a nonverbal discriminative stimulus and is reinforced by generalized conditioned reinforcement.
What is a tact?
This type of experimental design is highly vulnerable to sequence effects, making it a poor choice if you want to compare the independent effectiveness of two completely different interventions in rapid succession.
What is an ABC (or alternating treatments design if carryover is high, but traditionally a sequential withdrawal/changing criterion)? (Accept: Changing Criterion or Alternating Treatments due to carryover/sequence effects).
A behavior analyst attributes a child’s aggression to an "unresolved inner conflict" or a "lack of impulse control." This error violates the principle of parsimony by inventing unobservable, internal causes for behavior.
What is a mentalism (or explanatory fiction)?
This schedule of reinforcement produces a post-reinforcement pause shaped like a "scallop" on a cumulative record, where responding accelerates as the end of the interval approaches.
What is a Fixed Interval (FI) schedule?
To verify a suspected automatic reinforcement function without putting the client at risk, a BCBA should look for high, steady rates of behavior across all experimental conditions, but specifically during this barren condition.
What is the Alone condition?
This specific verbal operant has point-to-point correspondence but no formal similarity. An example is writing down the word "D-O-G" after hearing someone say the word "dog."
What is transcription (or taking dictation)?
A BCBA counts the number of times a student calls out during a 5-minute interval, but only scores the interval if the behavior occurs for the entire duration of that 5-minute block. This underestimating measurement system is...
What is Whole-Interval Recording?
This specific assumption of science states that the universe is a lawful and orderly place where all phenomena occur as a result of other events.
What is determinism?
An intervention effectively reduces target behavior in the clinic. However, without any change to the schedule in the home environment, the target behavior suddenly increases at home. This phenomenon is known as...
What is behavioral contrast?
This descriptive assessment method involves recording the exact behavior, its immediate antecedent, and its immediate consequence in real-time narrative format within the natural environment.
What is ABC Narrative Recording?
A speaker says, "I think it is raining outside." The phrase "I think" modifies the primary tact "raining" by indicating the strength of the speaker's assertion. This secondary verbal operant is called...
What is an autoclitic?
This dimension of baseline logic is demonstrated when a researcher introduces an intervention, observes a change in the behavior, removes the intervention, and sees the behavior return to its original baseline levels.
What is verification?
While EAB (Experimental Analysis of Behavior) focuses on discovering basic principles in controlled laboratory settings, this branch is explicitly dedicated to developing technology to improve socially significant human behavior.
What is Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)?
This schedule of reinforcement requires the completion of a variable number of responses, but also requires that those responses occur within a specific, limited timeframe after the previous response.
What is an IRT (Interresponse Time) schedule (specifically, reinforcing short or long IRTs on a variable ratio)? (Accept: DRH/DRL on a VR schedule).
If a BCBA suspects a behavior is maintained by peer attention, but a traditional FA cannot be safely run due to severe self-injury, they should pivot to this FA variation where sessions are cut short immediately upon the first occurrence of the target behavior.
What is a Latency-Based Functional Analysis?
In stimulus equivalence training, you teach $A = B$ and $B = C$. Without explicit training, the client demonstrates that $C = A$. This represents which specific type of derived relation?
What is transitivity?
When evaluating a graph using visual analysis, the behavior analyst looks at the direction of the data path. This specific property is referred to as the...
What is the trend?
When Skinner talked about selection by consequences, he compared operant conditioning to this biological process outlined by Charles Darwin.
What is natural selection?
This specific type of conditioned reinforcer does not depend on a single type of deprivation state because it has been paired with many different types of unconditioned and conditioned reinforcers (e.g., money or tokens).
What is a Generalized Conditioned Reinforcer (GCSR)?
You are testing an automatic function. The client engages in stereotypic body rocking. To prove experimental control, you introduce a highly specific form of reinforcement that is physically incompatible with the sensory feedback of the rocking. This intervention strategy is called...
What is Sensory Extinction (or Environmental Enrichment/Noncontingent Reinforcement with competing stimuli)?
Unlike Skinner’s formulation of verbal behavior which relies heavily on formal similarities, Relational Frame Theory (RFT) defines verbal behavior based on this core concept, where humans arbitrarily relate stimuli regardless of physical properties.
What is Arbitrarily Applicable Relational Responding (AARR)?
A BCBA is asked by a school principal to share a client's behavior plan with a general education teacher who is not currently working with the student. According to the Ethics Code, the BCBA must do this before releasing the records.
What is obtain explicit written consent from the parent/guardian?