Behavior Intervention Planning and Implementation
This domain tests whether you can convert a functional hypothesis into a defensible plan: function-matched reinforcement, antecedent prevention, least-restrictive sequencing, treatment integrity, and programmed generalization. Items typically present a function and ask which procedure fits, or present an implementation and ask what is missing.
Building the plan
- Match the function. Attention → FCT/DRA plus extinction of attention-maintained behavior. Escape → demand fading, interspersal, break-mand training. Tangible → FCT with delay and denial tolerance. Automatic → competing stimulation, enrichment, response interruption.
- Lead with antecedent strategies: choices, priming, visual schedules, high-probability request sequences, noncontingent reinforcement. NCR can satiate the reinforcer and must be thinned.
- Reinforcement systems: DRA reinforces an alternative and withholds the maintaining reinforcer; DRO reinforces the absence of behavior in an interval; DRL lowers rate; DRH raises it. A DRO that ignores function usually fails.
- Extinction is a procedure, not a consequence: attention, escape, tangible, and sensory variations differ. Expect extinction bursts, response variability, and spontaneous recovery.
Implementation and integrity
- Write observable goals with a measurement plan, name who does what and when, and check fidelity with a component checklist plus direct observation.
- Token economies need specified target behaviors, exchange rates, backup reinforcers, and a thinning plan.
- Restrictive and punishment procedures come only after reinforcement-based alternatives, with consent, oversight, side-effect data, and a written least-restrictive justification.
Generalization and maintenance
- Program it: teach across settings, people, and stimuli; train loosely; use indiscriminable contingencies; recruit caregiver and peer mediation; thin schedules deliberately.
Worked example. Aggression is maintained by escape from difficult worksheets. The team delivers a break after every two completed problems (DRA with a break mand), reduces task difficulty initially, and does not allow escape following aggression. Aggression falls and mands rise within two weeks. The team then increases work requirements and thins break availability so the mand persists under leaner schedules - maintenance is designed, not hoped for.
Traps that cost marks. Choosing DRO when the behavior is attention-maintained and attention is already rich. Using time-out for escape-maintained behavior, which can function as the reinforcer. Omitting the thinning plan. Writing a plan with no data-based decision rule.