Core ABA Principles Flashcards

A behavior analyst notices that a client's self-injurious behavior (SIB) increases specifically when preferred activities are interrupted mid-task but not when they are never started. Which concept BEST explains this pattern?

Answer: Motivating operations — specifically, an abolishing operation created by task completion proximity

The proximity to completing a preferred activity acts as an abolishing operation (AO) that momentarily increases the value of finishing and decreases tolerance for interruption. This is a nuanced MO effect — not simply escape-maintained behavior, because SIB does not occur when the activity never begins, ruling out a generalized escape function.

When using a multiple-baseline design across behaviors, an analyst implements the intervention on Behavior B before a clear effect is demonstrated on Behavior A. What is the PRIMARY threat to internal validity this creates?

Answer: Confounding due to loss of experimental control — the design can no longer rule out history as a causal variable

The logic of a multiple-baseline design depends on staggered introduction: each tier acts as a control for the others. If the intervention is introduced before a stable baseline phase demonstrates a clear effect in the preceding tier, history (external events) cannot be ruled out as the cause of change in Behavior B, destroying experimental control.

A technician is implementing FCT (Functional Communication Training) for escape-maintained aggression. The client quickly learns to emit the mand, but after 3 weeks, aggression resurges even though the mand is still being honored. What is the MOST likely behavioral account of this resurgence?

Answer: The mand has come under extinction because its reinforcement rate is too lean relative to the historical reinforcement rate of aggression

When the mand is reinforced on a leaner schedule than aggression historically was, the mand loses its competitive advantage. The resurgence is not true spontaneous recovery (which occurs after extinction of the replacement behavior), but rather the mand's reinforcer value has decreased relative to the effort required, making aggression — which may contact occasional reinforcement — relationally more valuable.

An ABAT is collecting data using a partial-interval recording system for a behavior that actually occurs continuously for 40% of each interval. Compared to the true duration, the recorded data will MOST likely:

Answer: Overestimate occurrence because any instance, however brief, scores the entire interval

Partial-interval recording (PIR) scores an interval as 'occurred' if the behavior happens at any point during the interval, regardless of duration. This systematically overestimates prevalence for behaviors that occur briefly. A behavior present for 40% of each interval may be scored in nearly 100% of intervals if each instance touches a new interval boundary.

Two stimuli that have been trained as functionally equivalent through stimulus equivalence training are later shown to evoke different magnitudes of conditioned reinforcement. Which finding does this BEST illustrate?

Answer: Transformation of stimulus functions is not an automatic consequence of equivalence class membership

Membership in an equivalence class does not guarantee that all stimulus functions transfer equally among class members. Transformation of functions depends on additional conditioning history and context. Two class members can show asymmetric or partial function transfer — a finding well-documented in RFT and stimulus equivalence research — without the equivalence relations themselves being violated.

A client has a history of aggression reinforced by access to tangibles. The behavior analyst implements NCR using a fixed-time (FT) schedule. After initial success, she wants to thin the schedule. According to best practice for NCR schedule thinning, which approach MINIMIZES the risk of response resurgence?

Answer: Thin gradually using small interval increments only after behavior remains low for a pre-specified stability criterion at the current step

NCR schedule thinning must be data-driven: the interval is only extended after the behavior has stabilized at low rates under the current schedule (a pre-specified criterion). Doubling intervals indiscriminately risks re-establishing deprivation conditions that increase the motivating operation for aggression. Introducing extinction simultaneously with thinning can provoke extinction bursts and resurgence, counteracting NCR's non-contingent benefit.