Skill Acquisition and Behavior Reduction Procedures
Skill acquisition rests on arranged practice, prompting, and reinforcement. Discrete trial teaching (DTT) delivers short, massed trials with a clear SD, a prompt, a response, and a consequence, separated by an intertrial interval. Natural environment training embeds the same learning in ongoing activities and usually improves generalization. Prompt hierarchies run most-to-least (errorless, good for new and dangerous skills) or least-to-most (builds independence), and time delay fades prompts by inserting a pause. Fade prompts systematically and reinforce independent responses; unprompted correct responses should earn stronger reinforcement than prompted ones. Chaining follows a task analysis: forward chaining teaches the first step to mastery, backward chaining teaches the last step first, and total task teaching runs the whole sequence with prompting as needed.
Behavior reduction begins with assessment, not a packaged procedure. Indirect and descriptive methods (ABC recording) inform hypotheses, and a functional analysis tests them. Function-based treatments include antecedent changes such as noncontingent reinforcement and high-probability request sequences, extinction of the maintaining consequence, and differential reinforcement: DRA for an alternative response, DRI for a physically incompatible response, DRO for the absence of the target behavior during an interval, and DRL for a lower rate. Punishment-based tactics such as response cost and time-out reduce behavior without teaching a replacement and require consent and supervisory oversight.
Traps: confusing DRO with DRA, treating an extinction burst as failure, and selecting a procedure that ignores function. If a reinforcer seems ineffective, check preference and motivating operations before assuming noncompliance.
Worked example: aggression maintained by adult attention. Teach and reinforce an appropriate mand (DRA), withhold attention for aggression (extinction), and reinforce any interval with zero aggression (DRO) as a supplementary measure.
Rule of thumb: match the reduction procedure to the function and always build a replacement skill.