Amego Inc Behavior Analyst Certification Exam Preparation Module

Amego, Inc. Behavior Analyst Certification Exam Preparation Module I Introduction to Behavior Analysis Philosophy and Terms; Basic Principles; Seven Dimensions of ABA This Module is based on the BACB Task List 4 Section III: Foundational Knowledge Developed by: Michael Weinberg, Ph. D. , BCBA-D Note: Please advance the slide manually to hear the narration for each slide in the slide show. c. 2016 All Rights Reserved; may not be copied or reproduced without permission of Amego, Inc.

MODULE I Introduction to Applied Behavior Analysis Basic Concepts and Terms Objectives for Module I: 1. Distinguish, describe and define Applied Behavior Analysis and the Experimental Analysis of Behavior 2. Distinguish between basic models of learning 3. Identify and describe current philosophies of behavior analysis

MODULE I Introduction to Applied Behavior Analysis Basic Concepts and Terms • The Experimental Analysis of Behavior: The science of behavior, considered to have formally begun with Skinner’s book The Behavior of Organisms (1938). This is the study of how environmental variables affect behavior, and is how principles of behavior and operation of stimuli such as schedules of reinforcement, shaping, discrimination, generalization, respondent conditioning processes, and many others are discovered and clarified for developing the basic science on which behavior analysis is founded. . Skinner founded the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior in 1958. • Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA): This is the application of principles of behavior to treating socially significant behaviors and is the basis of much current work in areas such as autism, education, ADHD, and a host of problem behaviors. It is based upon the science of behavior and operant, as well as respondent, learning principles. This approach is primarily attributed to B. F. Skinner who conducted animal research on learning and was the leading proponent of “Radical Behaviorism” in the 20 th Century. The Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis was founded by Skinner in 1968. The first paper in the journal was on the seven dimensions of ABA by Baer, Wolf & Risley (1968). • ABA is a science in which procedures derived from the principles of behavior are systematically applied to improve socially significant behavior to a meaningful degree and to demonstrate experimentally that the procedures employed were responsible for the improvement in the behavior. It is usually attributed to have formally begun by Ayllon & Michael (1959) “The Psychiatric Nurse as a Behavioral Engineer. ” • Also, technologies have been developed over the past 30 years that have greatly improved instructional and teaching methods such as precision teaching, PECS, and others. Also, these advances have improved intervention methods for addressing problem behavior.

Introduction to Applied Behavior Analysis Basic Concepts and Terms, cont’d • Behaviorism: The philosophy of the science of human behavior (initiated by J. B Watson in the early 20 th Century, and later was the major focus of B. F. Skinner) • Radical Behaviorism: Developed by B. F. Skinner, this is a philosophy of the science of behavior attributing the causes of behavior to environmental events and includes effects on internal processes

Introduction to Terms in Behavior Analysis • Other sub areas within behaviorsim: - Methodological Behaviorism: Associated with Watson. This view states that private events may exist but due to difficulty directly measuring these, they are not appropriate subject matter of investigation in behavior analysis. - Structuralism: This is the view that private events do not exist (i. e. they are hypothetical constructs) and thus not appropriate for study in behavior analysis

Module I: Introduction to Applied Behavior Analysis Basic Concepts and Terms cont’d IVAN PAVLOV (1849 - 1936) B. F. Skinner (1904 -1990)

Module I: Introduction to Applied Behavior Analysis Basic Concepts and Terms, cont’d • • Basic Terms and Concepts Behavior: Movement of living organisms, displacement of a body part through space, produces a measurable change in some aspect of the environment, class of movements with common dimensions or functions. Response: A specific instance of a given behavior. Environment: “Conglomerate of real circumstances in which the organism or referenced part of the organism exists. ” Generally, any or all aspects of the surrounding world. Stimulus: Specific aspects of the environment that can be differentiated from one another.

Module I. Introduction to Applied Behavior Analysis Basic Concepts and Terms Cont’d • Determinism: The basic tenet that the universe operates in a lawful and orderly manner. If we conduct adequate research, we will discover or uncover the controlling variables in effect. Determinism is an important element of science and research. Without an adherence to this basic concept, we would not be able to pursue discovery of how the universe operates, and in our case, how environmental variables affect behavior. That is, we do not believe that behavior just happens for no reason or “comes out of nowhere. ” This view is non-deterministic and may be considered generally as “superstitious thinking. ” • Empiricism: The practice of objective observation, based on thorough description and precise quantification of the phenomena of interest. • Scientific Manipulation (Experimentation): Controlled experiment or series of experiments must be performed in which the factors suspected of having causal status are systematically controlled and manipulated while the effects on the event under study are carefully observed.

Terms and Concepts continued • • • Parsimony (“Occam’s Razor”): This is the concept that the simplest explanation is the best, or “stinginess” in our explanations and descriptions of behavioral phenomena. Philosophic Doubt: This has to do with questioning the conclusions drawn by researchers in published studies. This helps identify new topics for further research and clarification. This moves the science forward. Replication: This refers to repeating of experiments to further demonstrate effectiveness of the procedure or intervention with other populations, and in other settings. There is also “systematic replication” which is varying some aspect of an original procedure to look at generality of the procedure or intervention. It is critical to write procedures such that others can replicate them (i. e. technological as in the 7 dimensions of Baer, et. al. , 1968).

Module I. Introduction to Applied Behavior Analysis Basic Concepts and Terms Cont’d • Independent Variable: That aspect of the environment that is being controlled by the experimenter for systematic study and observation, and to determine its effect on the dependent variable. • Dependent Variable: The changes observed and measured in the subject matter of interest, in the case of behavior analysis, it is usually directly observable, measurable behavior.

Module I Pavlovian Conditioning • Pavlovian (Classical, or Respondent) Conditioning Paradigm, depicted in the following diagram; NS-US �� UR CS�� CR • Pavlovian processes though often overlooked are important for early development and learning and throughout life • Pavlovian processes are involved in an infant’s early reflexes, self-preservation, and defense mechanisms

Module I Pavlovian Conditioning • Pavlovian processes are involved in the infant’s orienting to sound and visual stimuli, that are based at first on reflexes, and later to conditioned stimuli as the environmental stimuli become paired with elicitors of these responses • Later, operant learning develops from these basic Pavlovian processes as the infant develops

Module I Pavlovian Conditioning, cont’d • Recall the Little Albert study by Watson & Rayner (1920), fear conditioning as an experimental model for psychopathological conditions, was discussed • Little Albert Study video: https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=9 h. Bfn. XACs. OI • The fear conditioning was based upon Pavlovian conditioning of the rat as the neutral stimulus (NS) with a loud, sudden noise (US – elicits fear reaction), until the rat becomes a conditioned stimulus (CS) for fear • Other “furry” items also elicited the fear reaction, demonstrating generalization of the conditioned fear response

Respondent Conditioning

Module I. Basic Principles of Behavior; Schedules of Reinforcement, Conditioned Reinforcement and Token Systems Basic paradigm for Classical (Pavlovian) Conditioning • US UR Unconditioned Stimulus Unconditioned Response • NS No Response Neutral Stimulus No Response • NS-US UR; NS + US Unconditioned Response • (CS)-US CR; NS-US Pairings establish the NS as a Conditioned Stimulus, and elicits the newly acquired Conditioned Response • CS CR the Conditioned Stimulus alone will elicit the Conditioned Response • Respondent behavior is “Elicited”

Module I. Basic Principles of Behavior; Schedules of Reinforcement ; Conditioned Reinforcement and Token Systems, cont’d Basic paradigm for operant learning • R Sr (reinforcement) The consequence can be an Unconditioned Reinforcer or Conditioned Reinforcer • CR NS-UR Response (behavior) is reinforced when followed by the Unconditioned Reinforcer (which can be paired with a Neutral Stimulus as indicated) • Behavior is maintained/shaped by the Conditioned Reinforcer – Conditioned Reinforcing Stimulus and Unconditioned Reinforcer (pairings establishes the NS as a Conditioned Reinforcer, Bersh & Antonitis, 1948) • The Response can be maintained by either the CR or UR (usually one is chosen for a given behavior • Operant Behavior is said to be “emitted” by the organism and depends upon a contingent relationship between the response and the consequence

Basic Operant Principles

Module I. Basic Principles of Behavior; Schedules of Reinforcement ; Conditioned Reinforcement and Token Systems, cont’d • Contingency: The principle of Skinnerian or Operant Conditioning that the consequence needs to be delivered only when the behavior occurs as a general principle of learning (i. e. and not when the behavior does not occur, or before the behavior). • Contiguity: The other basic principle of Operant Conditioning that there is an optimal time to deliver the consequence after the behavior occurs to produce learning – that being 0. 5 seconds

Module I Pavlovian Conditioning, Continued • Given the importance of Pavlovian Conditioning to early childhood development, and that it leads to operant learning in the infant, it is useful to compare and contrast the two types of learning paradigms

Module I Operant Learning-Respondent Conditioning Comparisons and Contrasts • Operant Learning Reinforcer delivered 0. 5 after the response for optimal conditioning Conditioned (secondary) reinforcer (NS) established by pairing with Unconditioned (primary) Reinforcer 0. 5 sec. after the NS Neutral Stimulus becomes the Conditioned Reinforcer, and is presented 0. 5 sec after the response to reinforce behavior Remove Reinforcer after the response to extinguish the behavior Behavior is “Emitted” • Pavlovian Conditioning NS &US presented before the response to produce conditioning The NS becomes CS and elicits the response Unconditioned Stimulus presented 0. 5 after Neutral Stimulus for optimal conditioning Neutral Stimulus becomes the Conditioned Stimulus after adequate pairing with the US Remove US after CS (Present CS alone) to extinguish the response “Behavior is Elicited”

Module I. Basic Principles of Behavior; Schedules of Reinforcement ; Conditioned Reinforcement and Token Systems, cont’d • New behavior is typically acquired by the process called “shaping” and once learned, is maintained best by intermittent reinforcement. • New behavior is taught by using a schedule of “Continuous Reinforcement” (CRF) until it is stable, then move gradually to an intermittent schedule. • Schedules of Intermittent Reinforcement: Time Based or Response Based Schedule Initials are as follows: VI, FI or VR, FR • Positive Reinforcement is highly preferred and needed to teach new behavior that you wish to see displayed. It is how new behavior is learned and maintained. It is the building block of all operant behavior

Schedules of Reinforcement • Interval Schedules: Arranged such that the first response to be reinforced that is emitted after the interval ends gets reinforced. This is the case for both variable and fixed interval (VI and FI) schedules. • Ratio Schedules: Reinforcement is delivered following a specific (FR) or average number (VR) of responses are emitted

Module I. Basic Principles of Behavior; Schedules of Reinforcement ; Conditioned Reinforcement and Token Systems, cont’d Time Interval Response Ratio Constant – Fixed FI FR Randomized/ Variable VI VR

Schedules of Reinforcement, cont’d • Studies show that Interval schedules result in behavior that is more resistant to extinction (i. e. will occur longer when placed on extinction following periods of acquisition and reinforcement on some intermittent schedule of reinforcement). (Ferster & Skinner, Schedules of Reinforcement, 1957).

Schedules of Reinforcement • Ferster & Skinner (1957), and later studies (see Catania, 2005), have shown that VI schedules result in behavior that is most resistant to extinction. • VI schedules produce low, steady rates of behavior and are recommended to maintain desired behavior • VR schedules produce the highest rate of behavior but less resistant to extinction than VI schedules. VR schedules may be useful if the objective is to maintain high rates of a behavior such as performing some task such as academics, factory work, or other such tasks

Characteristic Patterns of Intermittent Schedules of Reinforcement • Fixed Interval Schedules: On a cumulative graph, FI schedules produce a scalloping pattern such that responding occurs at increasing rates close to the end of the interval when reinforcement becomes available • Fixed Ratio Schedules: on a cumulative graph, FR schedules produce what is referred to as a “break-run” or “step-like” pattern. The rate of responding is high and then there is a post-reinforcement pause after each reinforcer delivery. • Variable Interval and Ratio schedules result in smoother, more stable rates of behavior most likely due to lack of predictability of reinforcer availability. • (See Ferster & Skinner, 1957, and Catania, 2005, for further details)

Module I. Basic Principles of Behavior; Schedules of Reinforcement ; Conditioned Reinforcement and Token Systems, cont’d Conditioned Reinforcement: • As indicated in the operant conditioning paradigm slide above, conditioned reinforcers can also be established by pairing the desired stimulus with the existing reinforcer following the response • It is desirable to establish conditioned reinforcers such as praise, tokens, access to activities, social interactions with peers or adults, and so on to expand the reinforcement options, increase social skills and interactions, and reduce dependence on food and the problem of satiation

Module I. Basic Principles of Behavior; Schedules of Reinforcement ; Conditioned Reinforcement and Token Systems, cont’d Conditioned Reinforcers: Special Case • There is a “special case” of a conditioned reinforcer in which the reinforcer permits or allows access to a variety of other reinforcing items or activities • This is known as a “generalized conditioned reinforcer” as it allows such access to various other reinforcers • Tokens are a primary example, and is analogous to money, since money also allows access to many other reinforcers and one does not experience satiation (typically). The tokens are exchanged for the “backup reinforcers” based upon a value system included in the behavior plan put into place.

Module I. Basic Principles of Behavior; Schedules of Reinforcement; Conditioned Reinforcement and Token Systems, cont’d • Unwanted behavior can be weakened in a number of ways: Extinction, Teach a replacement behavior, Response Blocking, and Punishment (not preferred and most problematic approach as well as ethically inappropriate) Operant Behavior Matrix Types of procedures and their technical names, used to increase or decrease rate or frequency of behavior • Positive Reinforcement, • Negative Reinforcement • Positive Punishment • Negative Punishment • Extinction

Module I. Basic Principles of Behavior; Schedules of Reinforcement ; Conditioned Reinforcement and Token Systems, cont’d • Extinction: This is a way to reduce or eliminate undesired behavior. Extinction is a process by which behavior is reduced or eliminated by removing the existing reinforcer maintaining the behavior. It is thus critical to conduct careful functional assessment of the behavior to determine the maintaining reinforcer in order to implement this effectively. • Extinction will be discussed in more detail in Module IV.

Module I. Basic Principles of Behavior; Schedules of Reinforcement; Conditioned Reinforcement and Token Systems, cont’d Exercise: Fill in the blanks in the table, below with the appropriate name for the identified procedure and provide an example of each. Increases Rate of Behavior Decreases rate of Behavior Consequence Identification Matrix Event Added (+) Event Removed (-) After Behavior

Module I, continued Seven Dimensions of Applied Behavior Analysis Baer, Wolf & Risley, JABA 1968

Seven Dimensions of ABA Applied: The term “applied” is not determined by the research procedures used but by the interest which society shows in the problems being studied. In behavioral application, the behavior, stimuli, and/or organism under study are chosen because of their importance to humans (usually) and society, rather than their importance to theory

Seven Dimensions of ABA Behavioral: This concept refers to the primary focus of study for behavior analysis: behavior itself and as it defined, observed and measured. Applied research asks how it is possible to get an individual to do something effectively. Thus it usually studies what subjects can be taught to do rather than what they merely say or state they “would, ” “could” or “should” do; unless, of course, a verbal response is the behavior of interest. Accordingly a subject's verbal description of his own non-verbal behavior usually would not be accepted as a measure of his actual behavior unless it were independently substantiated. Studies have shown that one’s own self-description of one’s own behavior tends to be inaccurate and unreliable.

Seven Dimensions of ABA Analytic: The analysis of a behavior, as the term is used here, requires a believable demonstration of the events that are likely to be responsible for the occurrence or nonoccurrence of that behavior. An experimenter has achieved an analysis of a behavior when s/he can exercise control over it. By common laboratory standards, that has meant an ability of the experimenter to increase, decrease and re-instate the behavior at will. This aspect of the role of the behavior analyst is what is said to be the hallmark or at the core of what behavior analysts do.

Seven Dimensions of ABA • • • Technological: "Technological" here means simply that the techniques making up a particular behavioral application are completely identified and described. In this sense, "play therapy" is not a technological description, nor is "social reinforcement". For purposes of application, all the salient ingredients of play therapy must be described as a set of contingencies between child response, therapist response, and play materials, before a statement of technique has been approached. • Similarly, all the components of social reinforcement must be specified (stimuli, contingency, and schedule) to qualify as a technological procedure. • The best rule of thumb for evaluating a procedure description as technological is probably to ask whether a typically trained reader could replicate that procedure well enough to produce the same results, given only a reading of the description. This is very much the same criterion applied to procedure descriptions in non-applied research, of course

Seven Dimensions of ABA • • Conceptual Systems: The field of applied behavior analysis will probably advance best if the published descriptions of its procedures are not only precisely technological, but also strive for relevance to principles of behavior. • To describe exactly how a preschool teacher will attend to a child’s play with peers in a child who is “socially shy” is good technological description; but to link it to concepts of shaping and social reinforcement procedures relates it to basic concepts of behavioral development. • Similarly, to describe the exact sequence of shape sorting and discrimination by a child is good; to refer also to "fading" and "errorless discrimination" and “reinforcement methods” is much better. • In both cases, the total description is adequate for successful replication by the reader; and it also shows the reader how similar procedures may be derived from basic principles. This can have the effect of making a body of technology into a discipline rather than a collection of tricks. Collections of “tricks” historically have been difficult to expand systematically, and when they were extensive, difficult to learn and teach.

Seven Dimensions of ABA Effective: • If the application of behavioral techniques does not produce large enough effects for practical value, then application has failed. Non-applied research often may be extremely valuable when it produces small but reliable effects, in that these effects testify to the operation of some variable which in itself has great theoretical importance. In application, theoretical importance of a variable is usually not at issue. Its practical importance, specifically its power in altering behavior enough to be socially important, is the essential criterion.

Seven Dimensions of ABA Generality: • A behavioral change may be said to have generality if it proves durable over time, if it appears in a wide variety of possible environments, or if it spreads to a wide variety of related behaviors. Thus, the improvement of articulation in a clinic setting will prove to have generality if it endures into the future after the clinic visits stop.

7 Dimensions of ABA • • Summary Applied: Applied interventions deal with problems of demonstrated social importance. Behavioral: Applied interventions deal with measurable behavior (or reports if they can be validated). Analytic: Applied interventions require an objective demonstration that the procedures caused the effect. Technological: Applied interventions are described well enough that they can be implemented by anyone with training and resources. Conceptual Systems: Applied interventions arise from a specific and identifiable theoretical base rather than being a set of packages or tricks. Effective: Applied interventions produce strong, socially important effects. Generality: Applied interventions are designed from the outset to operate in new environments and continue after the formal treatments have ended.

Module I Introduction to Applied Behavior Analysis Basic Concepts and Terms; Summary • • In this Module, the following topics were covered: Introduction to Behaviorism, Skinner, Watson and Pavlov Basic terms and concepts in Behavior Analysis, Behavioral Science, and distinction between Experimental and Applied Behavior Analysis Basic philosophy of Radical Behaviorism and Skinner’s approach Basic Principles of Operant and Respondent Conditioning How basic schedules of reinforcement are set up How to establish conditioned reinforcers; Token systems Seven Dimensions of Applied Behavior Analysis (Baer, Wolf & Risley, 1968) This module corresponds to Amego, Inc. Probes 8, 9, 10, 11 & 12 © 2014 All Rights Reserved; may not be copied or reproduced without permission of Amego, Inc.