What is a behavior? A behavior refers to any interaction between an organism and its environment that changes the environment in some way. For example: Clapping your hands, walking, making dinner, ordering a pizza, sleeping, sneezing. Anything that a dead person could not do is a behavior. An inanimate object cannot engage in a behavior. For example, a paper blowing…
Why Conduct Baseline Probes The purpose for conducting baseline probes is to establish a control in an experiment. In order to know whether or not an intervention (independent variable) changed a behavior (dependent variable) you would need a reference as to how often the behavior occurs prior to starting an intervention. You can learn some other very important things when…
Experimental control is the degree to which the same intervention can be shown to have a predictable effect on behavior. The point of experimental control is to demonstrate a functional relationship between a behavior (dependent variable) and intervention (independent variable). In applied behavior analysis, (ABA) behaviorists are constantly validating that interventions work by analysis and experimentation. If a behavior change…
In this brief article, we will define a behavior chain and explore chaining as a teaching procedure. Behavior Chain A behavior chain is a series of discrete behaviors that are linked together to produce end results. All steps are a discriminative stimulus (sd) for the next behavior in the chain and a conditioned reinforcer for the previous behavior in the…
In this brief blog article, we will explore and define what a data artifact is. A data artifact is something that, “appears to exist because of the way that it is measured” (Cooper, Heron and Heward, 2007). A Data artifact refers to a behavior that looks like it occurs more or less often than it actually occurred as a result…