Fundamentals of Applied Behavior Analysis
Behavior is anything an organism does that is observable and measurable; the dead-man's test (if a dead person could do it, it is not behavior) is a fast filter for labels like angry or unmotivated. The unit of analysis is the three-term contingency: antecedent, behavior, consequence. Within the antecedent, separate two things exam questions love to blur. A discriminative stimulus (SD) signals that reinforcement is available for a particular response. A motivating operation changes the value of a consequence and momentarily alters how likely the behavior is. Keep those apart; conflating them is the single most common error.
Classify consequences with two questions: was something added or removed, and did the behavior increase or decrease? Add and increase is positive reinforcement; remove and increase is negative reinforcement; add and decrease is positive punishment; remove and decrease is negative punishment. Negative reinforcement is not punishment; escaping a demand that strengthens the behavior is reinforcement.
Schedules matter too. Use continuous reinforcement while a skill is new, then thin to intermittent schedules (fixed or variable, ratio or interval) for durability; variable schedules resist extinction best. Extinction, spontaneous recovery, and extinction bursts all follow from withholding the maintaining consequence, so always ask what function is being weakened. Higher-order concepts include shaping through successive approximations, chaining from a task analysis, prompting and fading to establish stimulus control, and generalization and discrimination training. The seven dimensions of ABA (applied, behavioral, analytic, technological, conceptually systematic, effective, generality) are usually tested as definition matching.
Rule of thumb: before naming a procedure, name the function. What consequence followed, and did behavior rise or fall, tells you more than the topography does.