Prevention, Teaching, and Reinforcement-Based Strategies
Prevention, Teaching, and Reinforcement-Based Strategies tests your ability to reduce problem behavior by changing antecedents, teaching skills, and arranging reinforcement. The exam favors positive, instructional approaches over aversive control.
Core rules
- Prevent through environmental arrangement, routines, visual schedules, precorrection, high-probability request sequences, and clear expectations.
- Teach functionally equivalent replacement skills using prompting, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback; fade prompts to avoid prompt dependency.
- Reinforcement-based tactics include functional communication training, differential reinforcement of alternative behavior, differential reinforcement of other behavior, differential reinforcement of low rates, token economies, and behavior contracts.
- Differential reinforcement of alternative behavior reinforces a specific alternative and withholds reinforcement for the problem behavior; differential reinforcement of other behavior reinforces the absence of the problem behavior for an interval; differential reinforcement of low rates reinforces lower rates.
- Thin reinforcement schedules gradually and plan for generalization.
Worked example
Disruption is maintained by escape from writing. Functional communication training teaches a break card. Each break request produces a short break; disruption no longer produces escape. The team initially reinforces every request, then thins to every second or third request while keeping task demands manageable. Fidelity and disruption data are reviewed weekly.
Traps
Using differential reinforcement of other behavior without knowing the function; inadvertently reinforcing problem behavior; making initial schedules too lean; failing to thin; and not planning for maintenance.