Foundational Knowledge of Behavior Analysis
This domain tests whether you can explain why behavior-analytic technology works, not just recite procedures. Expect items that ask you to classify a contingency, identify the operant versus respondent process at work, or predict what happens to response rate when a schedule parameter changes. Precision in terminology is the scoring currency; a plausible answer that swaps negative reinforcement for punishment earns nothing.
The selectionist framework
- Behavior is selected by consequences at three levels: phylogeny (reflexes, unconditioned responses), ontogeny (operant shaping across a lifetime), and culture (metacontingencies, verbal communities).
- Radical behaviorism treats private events - thoughts, feelings - as behavior subject to the same laws, not as causes standing outside the analysis.
- Respondent conditioning pairs a neutral stimulus with a US until the CS elicits a CR; operant conditioning changes the probability of a response class as a function of consequences.
The contingency unit
- Three-term contingency: S^D → response → consequence. The discriminative stimulus signals availability of reinforcement; the S-delta signals its absence.
- Motivating operations are not S^Ds. An EO increases reinforcer value and evokes the behavior that has produced it (attention deprivation); an AO abolishes value (satiation). Value-altering and behavior-altering effects are both required for a true MO.
- Rule-governed behavior is controlled by instructions and is often less sensitive to schedule changes than contingency-shaped behavior.
Schedules and stimulus control
- Intermittent schedules (FR, VR, FI, VI) produce characteristic rates and post-reinforcement pauses; VI and VR sustain responding with greater resistance to extinction than CRF.
- Stimulus generalization is a gradient; discrimination training sharpens it.
- Verbal behavior is classified by controlling antecedent and consequence: mand (EO → specific reinforcer), tact (nonverbal stimulus → generalized SR), intraverbal (verbal antecedent → verbal consequence), echoic, textual.
Worked example. A clinician removes a token for each instance of shouting. Shouting falls in baseline but rises sharply when the token system is thinned. Classification: response cost, a form of negative punishment - a stimulus is removed contingent on behavior and the behavior decreases. The resurgence during thinning is a schedule and treatment-integrity problem, so the answer is not "add more punishment" but to check which reinforcement schedule is maintaining shouting.
Traps that cost marks. Confusing negative reinforcement with punishment (both involve removal). Calling an S^D a "cue" that predicts reinforcement it does not actually signal. Treating escape as a response topography rather than a function. Labeling MOs as S^Ds.