“By far, the best way to study for your BCBA exam is to come up with examples and non examples of each term. That’s because the exam does not focus on memorizing applied behavior analysis terms and picking out their definitions. It focused on applying the principles of behavior to real life situations. If you can write your own examples of applying terms, you will be able to understand the scenarios on your exam.” Jessica Leichtweisz
This blog post written by Katherine Yohn, models some examples of response and stimulus generalization.
Response generalization
- Sawyer was taught to pet his dog on the head to say hello. When he was walking down the street on the way to his friend’s house, he saw his mom walking his dog and waved hello to him.
- Samantha was taught to take photos on an iPhone camera. When she was with her friend, she was asked to take a photo of her using her Samsung tablet. Samantha was able to take a photo using her friend’s tablet.
- Cindy was able to learn how to boil water and make her own pasta using an electric stove at her grandma’s house. One day the stove wasn’t working and she was able to use an Instapot to boil the water without being directly taught to do so.
Stimulus generalization
- Milly was taught how to swallow an Advil pill. One day at work, the friend only had Tylenol when she asked for some medicine due to having a headache. She was able to swallow the Tylenol pill with no problems due to being taught how to swallow Advil.
- Jeff was taught to use the bathroom at home. This is the only toilet that he was ever been taught on. One day while at the park, Jeff was able to use the go to the bathroom using the toilet in the park.
- Sally was taught to ask for chips at home using a bag of Lays chips by staying, “I want chips.” Then at the store, she saw a bag of Ruffles chips and said “I want chips.”
Citation: Cooper, J. O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (2020). Applied behavior analysis (3rd ed.).
