Cassie BCBA Section A Flashcards
What are the three different types of investigations and level of understanding?
1.) Description 2.) Prediction 3.) Control
What is Description?
- Collection of facts about OBSERVED events that can be quantified,
classified, & examined for possible relations with other known
facts - Suggests hypotheses or questions for additional research
- Describe what is happening, antecedents, behaviors, and consequences (ABC)
**When this happens, that happens and then something else happens
Example:
1.) During 5th grade math class Julian is surrounded by 24 of his peers. When Mrs. Applebottom calls on him, he ducks his head under his desk and squeals until she moves on to another student.
2.) A parent comes to a clinic and is interviewed by the lead BCBA® about their child’s self-injurious and aggressive behavior. The parent describes to the BCBA that the aggressive behavior only occurs when the mother is interacting with the other siblings in the home. The parent also describes that the self-injurious behavior only occurs when the child is denied access to highly preferred activities. The parent has provided the BCBA with a description of the events that are associated with self-injurious and aggressive behavior exhibited by the child.
What is prediction?
- Based on repeated observation revealing relations between various
events - Demonstrates correlations between events
- The use of the description to see if there are correlations between different events. Go back to the example above (description) (temporal proximity). Occur repeatedly? When Mrs. Applebottom calls on him, he ducks his head under the desk…this can be predicted and a correlation as temporal proximity.
Example:
1.) We can make several predictions. WE might predict that Julian will duck his head the next time Mrs. Applebottom calls on him, or that Julian will NOT duck his head when Mrs. Applebottom DOESN’T call on him. Or even that peers also will not duck their heads when called on.
2.) You observe your neighbor collect their mail at the end of their very long driveway every afternoon. You also observe that on afternoons that it is raining, your neighbor carries an umbrella over their head. You can predict that each time it rains, your neighbor will carry an umbrella while they collect their mail.
3.) A client on the inpatient unit engages in verbal aggressive behavior (e.g., screaming, cursing, verbal threats) toward staff and other patients on the milieu. After several days of observation, the nurse on the unit notices that each time the client requests and is denied access to alcohol and cigarettes, they engage in verbal aggression. The nurse predicts that each time the patient is denied access to alcohol and cigarettes, they will engage in verbal aggression.
What is control?
- Highest level of scientific understanding
- Functional relations can be derived
- Specific change in one event (Dependent variable) can reliably be
produced by specific manipulations of another event (Independent
variable) - And the change in the dependent variable was unlikely to be the
result of other extraneous factors (confounding variables) - Events can only really be “co-related”
Example: The first five times that Mrs. Applebottom calls on Julian, he ducks his head and squeals. Mrs. Applebottom then taps Julian on the shoulder and whispers a question privately to him. On each of these five occasions, Julian answers without ducking his head. The next day, Mrs. Applebottom calls on Julian. Again, he ducks his head each time. From then on, Mrs. Applebottom quietly asks Julian questions, and he politely answers
Remember:
- Consider this as a baseline (the first five times), intervention, baseline…etc.
- This is an ABAB example
- The intervention is working and gains CONTROL
- IV changes the DV and without the IV the DV does NOT change
