Procedures and Intervention Flashcards

A behavior technician is implementing a DRO (Differential Reinforcement of Other Behavior) procedure with a 5-minute interval. The target problem behavior occurs at minute 4:45. According to strict DRO protocol, what should the technician do?

Answer: Reset the interval to 5 minutes and withhold reinforcement

In a DRO, reinforcement is contingent on the absence of the target behavior for the entire interval. Any occurrence of the behavior — even at second 4:59 — resets the interval clock. Delivering reinforcement or adjusting the interval arbitrarily would undermine the contingency and may inadvertently reinforce the behavior.

During a functional behavior assessment, a learner's problem behavior is maintained by automatic reinforcement. Which intervention combination is MOST likely to be effective based on this function?

Answer: Extinction plus NCR with a matched sensory alternative

Automatically reinforced behavior is self-sustaining and not controlled by social consequences. Extinction (blocking the sensory feedback) combined with noncontingent reinforcement (NCR) using a functionally matched sensory alternative addresses the maintaining variable directly. Social praise (option D) would be ineffective since social attention is not the function.

A BCBA directs a behavior technician to implement a prompting hierarchy using 'least-to-most' prompting. The learner makes an error after the gesture prompt but before a partial physical prompt is delivered. What is the correct next step?

Answer: Deliver the next, more intrusive prompt level immediately

In least-to-most (LTM) prompting, the technician progresses through the hierarchy from least intrusive to most intrusive within the same trial upon each error or non-response. When an error occurs at the gesture level, the next step is to immediately deliver the next prompt level (partial physical), not to restart the sequence or skip to full physical.

A learner is receiving behavioral skills training (BST) on a new daily living skill. The technician has completed instruction and modeling. The learner's first rehearsal attempt contains two minor errors. What should the technician do NEXT according to BST protocol?

Answer: Provide immediate, specific feedback on the errors and have the learner rehearse again

BST consists of four components: instruction, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback. Following a rehearsal attempt — even one with errors — the technician provides immediate, specific feedback (reinforcing correct components, correcting errors) and then repeats rehearsal until the learner meets the criterion. Re-modeling the full skill or skipping feedback disrupts the iterative feedback loop that defines BST.

During discrete trial training (DTT), a technician notices that a learner's correct responding is high when the technician faces the learner directly, but near zero when a substitute technician runs trials. This pattern MOST likely indicates:

Answer: Stimulus overselectivity on technician-specific cues rather than the SD

When a skill does not transfer across different instructors, the learner has likely learned to respond to idiosyncratic features of the original technician (facial expressions, posture, voice) rather than the actual discriminative stimulus. This is stimulus overselectivity — attending to irrelevant or narrow cue subsets. The intervention is systematic generalization training across multiple instructors and settings.

A behavior technician is running a chained task (backward chain) for hand washing. The learner has mastered all steps except drying hands. On today's session, the learner spontaneously completes the drying step without a prompt for the first time, but then skips turning off the faucet — a step already mastered. What is the MOST appropriate response?

Answer: Return to the faucet step, deliver the least intrusive prompt needed, then allow the learner to complete drying again

In backward chaining, previously mastered steps are expected to be performed independently. An error on a mastered step requires the technician to return to that step, use the minimum prompt necessary to re-establish correct performance, and then allow the chain to continue — preserving the integrity of the full task chain. Reinforcing only the novel target step while ignoring errors on mastered steps would allow skill regression to go unaddressed.