SAFMEDS Foundations Flashcards
ABA Foundations vocabulary words 60 terms in 60 seconds to promote fluency
A stimulus that precedes or
accompanies a behavior and may
exert discriminative control over
that behavior
Antecedent
It is a system designed to analyze
and change behavior in a precisely
measurable and accountable
manner.
ABA
Repeated measures of the strength or level (e.g., frequency, intensity, rate, duration, or latency) of behavior prior to the introduction of an experimental variable.
Baseline
Any living organism’s directly
measurable actions or physical
functions, including both saying and
doing.
Behavior
The specified dependencies or
relations between behavior and its
antecedents and consequences.
Contingencies
Doctrine that acts of will, occurrences in nature, or social or psychological phenomena are causally determined by preceding events or natural laws.
Determinism
Consists of reinforcing particular behavior(s) of a given class (or form, pattern or topography) while placing those same behaviors on extinction and/or punishing them when they fail to match performance standards or when they occur under inappropriate stimulus conditions.
Differential reinforcement
A response that occurs only when
the particular SD is present.
Discriminated operant
Stimuli that control behavior differentially, after having been present reliably when a response either has been reinforced, placed on extinction, or punished.
Discriminative stimuli (SD)
An antecedent stimulus in the
presence of which a given response
is not likely to be reinforced.
S-delta
In respondent conditioning of reflexes, a verb used to denote the effect of an antecedent conditioned or unconditioned stimulus on a conditioned or unconditioned response.
Elicit
A verb that describes the occurrence
of an operant behavior.
Emit
The context in which the behavior
occurs.
Environment
Practices, programs, or procedures
scientifically demonstrated to be
effective with like populations.
Evidence-based practices
A theory that all forms of life naturally and continually evolve as a result of the interaction between function and the survival value of the function.
Selectionism
A scientific method designed to
discover the functional relation
between behavior and the variables
that control it.
Experimental analysis of
behavior
The diminished rate (or eventual total absence) of a behavior, resulting from the discontinuation of reinforcement contingent on a particular target behavior.
Extinction
A predictable, temporary increase in
the rate, variability, and intensity of
an array of (presumably previously
reinforced) responses.
Extinction burst
Includes the following elements: motivating or establishing operations, antecedent stimuli (discriminative stimuli), responses (behaviors), and consequences.
Four term contingency
A lawful relation between values of
two variables.
Functional relation
The spread of effects to other classes of behavior, when one class of behavior is modified by reinforcement, extinction, and so on. The shift in the form or topography of a behavior.
Response generalization
The occurrences of the response in the presence of antecedent stimuli sharing certain characteristics with those previously correlated with reinforcement.
Stimulus generalization
Effective for a wide range of behaviors as a result of having been paired with a variety of previously established reinforcers (primary and conditioned).
Generalized reinforcer
A schedule of reinforcement in
which some, but not all, of the
occurrences of a response are
reinforced.
Intermittent
reinforcement
A schedule according to which reinforcers are presented contingent on the first response emitted following an interval of a constant time period.
Fixed interval schedule
A schedule according to which reinforcers are presented contingent on the first response emitted following the completion of intervals averaging a specific time period.
Variable interval schedule
Any enduring change in behavior
produced as a function of the
interaction between the behavior
and the environment.
Learning
A restriction placed on an interval schedule requiring that to be eligible for reinforcement, the primed response (the first response following termination of the required interval) must occur within a specific span of time following that interval.
Limited hold
A description of a phenomenon according to which organisms distribute their responses according to the proportion of payoff during choice situations.
Matching Law
Antecedent events that (a) change the value of the consequence, or, (b) along with the immediate discriminative stimulus (SD), may alter the relative frequency or probability of behavior.
Motivating operation
A schedule of reinforcement
requiring a specific number of
responses be emitted for
reinforcement.
Fixed ratio schedule
The reinforcer is presented on a fixed-time (FT) or variable-time (VT) schedule of reinforcement, regardless of the client’s actions at the time.
Noncontingent
reinforcement
The strength (e.g., rate or duration) of behavior prior to any known or designed conditioning.
Operant level
A reductive procedure composed of
a relevant and educative form of
contingent exertion.
Overcorrection
Requires the individual to restore
the environment to a state
substantially improved from that
which existed prior to the act.
Restitution
Requires the individual repeatedly to
practice a positive alternative
behavior.
Positive practice
The simplest theory that fits the
facts of a problem is the one that
should be evaluated before moving
to a more complex explanation
Parsimony
The extent to which a learner
continues to perform the target
behavior after a portion or all of the
intervention has been removed.
Maintenance
A stimulus, such as an object or event, that follows or is presented as a consequence of a response and results in the rate of that response increasing or maintaining.
Positive reinforcer
Statement that contingent access to
higher-probability behavior
(“preferred activities”) reinforces
lower-probability behavior.
Premack Principle
A stimulus that, when presented
immediately following a response,
effects a reduction in the rate of the
response.
Punisher
An event occurring contingent on a
response that decreases the future
probability of the response.
Punishment
A process in which a behavior is
strengthened as a function of an
event that occurs as a consequence
of, or contingent on, the response.
Reinforcement
A specific behavioral consequence,
the addition of which functions, to
increase or maintain the rate of a
behavior.
Reinforcer
To repeat or duplicate an
experimental procedure, usually to
demonstrate its reliability by
reproducing the results.
Replication
The composite set of behaviors
controlled by a particular reinforcing
or punishing event.
Response class
A reductive procedure in which a specified quantity of available reinforcers are contingently withdrawn following the response, resulting in a decrease in the rate of the response.
Response cost
The recurrence of previously
reinforced behavior when a target,
or dominant, behavior is placed on
extinction.
Resurgence
The rule followed by the
environment that determines which
among the many occurrences of a
response will be reinforced.
Schedule of reinforcement
A specific or combination of physical
objects or events, (stimuli), which
affect the behavior of an individual.
Stimulus
A group of antecedent stimuli that
have a common effect on an
operant class.
Stimulus class
The process that enables an antecedent to gain control over one or more particular behaviors as a function of the individual’s experience of responseconsequence correlation in the presence of that antecedent.
Stimulus control
A philosophic position asserting that
the truth value of a statement is
determined by how well it promoted
effective action
Pragmatism
A procedure in which access to varied sources of reinforcement is removed or reduced for a particular time period contingent on an unwanted response, for the purpose or reducing the rate of the response.
Time out
Behavior under the control of as
rules and instructions, rather than
behavior shaped by reinforcing or
aversive consequences.
Rule governed behavior
A statement of the anticipated
outcome of a presently unknown or
future measurement.
Prediction
A form of behaviorism that attempts to understand all human behavior, including private events such as thoughts & feelings in terms of controlling variables in the history of the person and species.
Radical behaviorism
The objective observation of the
phenomena of interest.
Empiricism
A schedule of reinforcement
requiring a varying number of
responses for reinforcement.
Variable ratio schedule
An attitude that the truthfulness and
validity of all scientific theory should
be continually questioned.
Philosophic doubt
