Basic Terms
A scientific approach to understanding behavior via measurement of observable actions
What is Behavior Analysis
This type of learning occurs when a neutral stimulus becomes associated with a naturally occurring stimulus.
What is Classical or Respondent Conditioning?
The field that applies behavior analysis principles to improve socially significant behaviors.
What is Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)?
This type of recording involves counting the number of times a response occurs
What is frequency recording?
This is a cue in the environment that indicates whether reinforcement is available or not.
What is a discriminative stimulus (SD)?
This key figure is considered the founder of radical behaviorism and developed the theory of operant conditioning.
Who is B.F. Skinner?
In classical conditioning, this term describes the original stimulus that automatically produces a response.
What is an unconditioned stimulus (US)?
This disorder is most commonly addressed using behavioral interventions in children
What is Autism Spectrum Disorder?
A research design that involves systematically withdrawing and reintroducing an intervention to demonstrate its effect.
What is a reversal or ABA design?
This is the name for the technique of building stimulus control by reinforcing a response in the presence of one stimulus, but not another.
Discrimination training
This term refers to a consequence that increases the future frequency of a behavior under similar settings.
What is a reinforcer?
This consequence decreases the likelihood of a behavior being repeated.
What is punishment?
A method of reducing a behavior by reinforcing a behavior that cannot co-occur with the target behavior?
What is diffential reinforcement of an incompatible response (DRI)
A method of recording that captures the exact duration of a behavior.
What is duration recording?
You order tacos at Taco Bell and coffee at Kaladi. This is the behavioral term for what influences you to select these responses under these particular environmental conditions.
What is stimulus control
The process of gradually shaping a complex behavior by reinforcing successive approximations.
What is shaping?
This is the removal of an aversive stimulus that results in an increase in the behavior that preceded it.
What is negative reinforcement?
This is the general term for reinforcing a particular behavior, while withholding or minimizing reinforcement for another behavior.
What is differential reinforcement?
This is the thing that is measured to see if the predicted change occurred.
What is the dependent variable?
This word decribes a group of things that share common features or function.
What is a stimulus class?
This Russian physiologist first described classical conditioning through experiments with dogs.
Who is Ivan Pavlov?
This is the process of discontinuing or withholding reinforcement or that results in a decrease in the future frequency of a behavior.
What is extinction?
These are said to occur when the same response is simultaneously contacting reinforcement and punishment
What are incompatible contingencies?
The factor in an experiment that is changed or manipulated by the researcher.
What is the independent variable?
What is the transfer of a learned response to similar stimuli?
What is stimulus generalization