ABA Lesson 7&8

Question 1

Punisher (Les 7)

Answer 1

Stimulus change that occurs after a behavior and decreases future occurrences of the behavior.

Question 2

Punishment Processes (kinds)

Answer 2

1) Positive - undesired consequence (stimulus) PRESENTED after behavior. This leads to a decrease in the future frequency of that behavior.
2) Negative - desired stimuli REMOVED after behavior. This leads to a decrease in the future frequency of that behavior.

Question 3

Positive punishers vs Negative punishers?

Answer 3

Negative punishers: fines, time-out, loss of privileges, removal of attention. “You have it - you like it - I take it away”
Positive punishers below

Question 4

Behavioral contrast?

Answer 4

Changes in consequence delivery in one context that cause behavioral changes leads to opposite changes in behavior in other contexts.
Behavior decreases in contexts in which it is punished, but increases in other contexts.

Question 5

Learned Helplessness

Answer 5

Repeated punishment in the absence of reinforcement for alternative behaviors leads to a cessation of all actions.
You’re going to train something called learned helplessness, which means the person has no idea what to do to get their needs met, so they stop trying and we don’t want that.

Question 6

Normalization

Answer 6

Social justice movement designed to make available to all people with disabilities patterns of life and conditions of everyday living which are as close as possible to the regular circumstances and way of life or society.

Question 7

Restraint

Answer 7

Physically holding or securing the individual, either briefly to interrupt and intervene with severe problem behavior or for an extended period of time using mechanical devices to prevent otherwise uncontrollable problem behavior that has the potential to produce serious injury

Question 8

Seclusion

Answer 8

Isolating an individual from others to interrupt and intervene with problem behavior that places the individual or others at risk of harm.

Question 9

Three considerations for using restraint or seclusion, according to the ABAI’s position statement, are:

Answer 9

welfare of the individual, right to choose, and least restrictiveness

Question 10

What are the problems with punishment?

Answer 10

1) Emotional and Aggressive Reactions
May be directed to the punisher or to the immediate environment, including bystanders.

Emotional or aggressive responding may lead to escaping the punishment, creating a reinforcement cycle in which these less-preferred behaviors increase.

2) Escape/Avoidance Behaviors Emerge
Avoiding the punisher

Avoiding the task or environment

Substance use/abuse

Emergence of negative behaviors that enable avoidance (lying, cheating, etc.)

3) The Punisher is Paired with Punishment
Just as with reinforcement, a person who is consistently delivering punishments takes on the characteristics of a punisher.

4) Behavioral Contrast
Behavior decreases in contexts in which it is punished, but increases in other contexts.

5) Undesirable Modeling
Children learn what they live. If parents address behaviors they do not like with corporal punishment or ridicule, the child will likely do the same.

6) Behaviors are Suppressed, but Not Replaced with Skills
Risk of developing learned helplessness

7) Punishment is Reinforcing to the Punisher
Immediate effect of misbehavior stopping reinforces the use of punishment, even if the long-term effects increase the problem behavior.

Question 11

Habituation

Answer 11

A decrease in an individual’s response to stimuli after the stimuli are repeated.

Question 12

Antecedent intervention

Answer 12

programs that are implemented prior to alter the environment before the behavior of concern occurs, with the goal of preventing it from occurring.

Question 13

Intermittent schedules of reinforcement (INT)

Answer 13

occur when some but not all occurrences of a behavior result in the delivery of reinforcement.

Question 14

FR 1 (fixed ratio) schedule

Answer 14

A fixed number of responses must occur before reinforcement is provided.
e.g. Instant rewards: Every time Maria’s boyfriend says the “L” word, she gives him a big hug and kiss (this is fixed ratio because FR=1).

Question 15

Continuous reinforcement

Answer 15

Continuous reinforcement is the repeated reinforcement of a behavior every time it happens. This can involve positive (adding a stimulus) or negative (removing a stimulus) reinforcement, with the goal of encouraging certain actions.

Question 16

Accidental (incidental) reinforcement

Question 17

What are the subtypes of overcorrection?

Answer 17

Positive practice overcorrection - the person is required to repeatedly perform a correct version of the incorrect behavior.
e.g. Instead of having you write sentences about I will not run in the hallway, you would be required to go back to the beginning of the hallway and walk correctly five times.
Simple Correction - the person is only required to restore the environment and not improve it.
e.g. Now, if you were required to do that only once, that would just be called correction.
Restitutional Overcorrection - the person is required to repair some aspect of the environment that his or her behavior impacted, then improve it past its original state
e.g. if you ran through the hallway and you also in the process of doing so, knocked a poster off the wall, then you might be required to walk down the hallway correctly and rehang the poster. And while you are rehanging that poster, look to see if there are any other posters to fix those as well.

Question 18

Response Blocking

Answer 18

Physically blocking the completion of a problem behavior

Question 19

Self-Stimulatory Behavior

Answer 19

Repetition of non-purposeful movement or sounds

Question 20

Pica

Answer 20

Purposeful ingestion of inedible materials

Question 21

Overcorrection

Answer 21

A requirement to perform effortful behavior that is functionally or logically related to the problem behavior as consequence for the problem behavior.

Question 22

Non-Exclusion Time-Out

Answer 22

This is a form of time out where the person is not physically removed from the environment, but they do lose access to participation and any positive reinforcement that is going on in that environment during the designated time out time.

Question 23

What are the subtypes (versions) of non-exclusion time-out?

Answer 23

there are typically about four versions of not exclusion time out.
1) the simplest is called planned ignoring, and this is just removal of attention only. So if the child is behaving in an inappropriate way, the parents might be coached to just pretend that the tantrum isn’t happening at all.
2) Reinforcer withdrawal - remove access to some form of positive reinforcement while the person continues to be in the room. e.g. we use this a lot in ABA is with electronics, access to ipads, televisions that can just be turned off.
3) The time out ribbon is meant to be a signal to the child and to others who might be providing reinforcement to the child. So in the time out ribbon, the person is wearing some sort of signal, might be a bracelet or a button or a hat. And this signals to the child that you are doing very well, and I appreciate your behavior and you may freely engage in activities of your interests. But if the target behavior is displayed, the time that ribbon is removed from the person and for that duration of time that the ribbon is gone, the person is not allowed to receive attention or access to extra reinforcement in the room.
4) contingent observation is when the person is still in close proximity to the activities that are going on, but they’re not allowed to participate. They’re usually required to sit along the perimeter. So you can think of this as situations where children are told that they must sit out at recess (break). And in order for not exclusion time out to work, we have to know that they really do want those things and that you have identified all of the reinforcing variables that are present in the room, because if there are other things that they can substitute and be just as reinforced with, then your program won’t work.

Question 24

What is exclusion time-out

Answer 24

Contingent removal of the person from the whole reinforcing environment for a specified period of time.

Question 25

What are the subtypes of exclusion time-out

Answer 25

1) Time-out room (designated area that is devoid of reinforcement), a designated area somewhere in the house, school or clinic where there is not a lot of reinforcement available.
2) Partitioning (placing a screen between the individual and the environment).
3) Hallway Time-out - placing the person into the hallway. If they’re likely to engage in self harming behavior, this is not the best choice for behavior intervention plan.

Question 26

Time-out is for which reinforcement behavior? Explain?

Answer 26

Timeout is for behaviors that are reinforced through positive reinforcement.
If the person is engaging in the problem behavior in order to gain attention or access to fun things, then taking them out of the environment that includes attention and fun things should lead to a decrease in the problem behavior. If, on the other hand, the person is engaging in the behavior for negative reinforcement, meaning to get out of doing their schoolwork or to make people go away and we use time out, then what we have done is reinforce that we have given them what they wanted.

Question 27

Response cost?

Answer 27

final version of negative punishment - contingent removal of a specified amount of reinforcement (e.g., time, tokens, money).

Question 28

What are the Motor Skills? Define each (Les 8)

Answer 28

1) Gross motor skills - are those large muscle movements of the arms and the legs, so walking, running, jumping, reaching, and for the most part, that’s going to be within the domain of a physical therapist, but your help is to make sure that the child who is learning to walk is consistently surrounded by encouragement to do so.
2) Fine motor skills are focused on the use of the hands and the fingers and coordinating movement with the eyes. Many of the skills that you will be teaching as an RBT require fine motor skills. So oftentimes you’ll be working on things simultaneously, such as sorting tasks or working puzzles, things like that.
3) Motor imitation is very important behavior analytically because it is a precursor behavior to vocal imitation (verbal behavior). And so with young children, you may find yourself playing a lot of games like pattycake and peekapoo, which are developmentally important. Whereas most children going through the developmental sequence are easily reinforced with the attention and the fun and the music, many of the children that you may be working with who have autism may not be entertained by those things. So your role will be sometimes to introduce a secondary reinforcer to encourage them to do that.

Question 29

Joint attention

Answer 29

is when the child looks where the adult looks, it includes the ability to follow a point. And in the beginning, it develops from the child looking where you look to the child initiating joint attention. So pointing at something and looking at you, so that you will look at it.

Question 30

1) What are the components of visual perception? (early childhood)

Answer 30

1) Matching, Scanning, Sorting

Question 31

1) What are executive functioning skills?
2) What are Independent Living skills?
3) Behavior Management skills?

Answer 31

1) Organizational Skills - Time Management - Planning - Prioritizing - Risk/Benefit Analysis
2) Household Maintenance - Housekeeping Skills - Cooking and Nutrition - Transportation - Navigation - Community Supports - Self Advocacy
3) Problem Behavior Reduction - Replacement Behavior Development