ABA Designs (Reversal Designs)
Baseline, intervention, return to baseline
• More powerful than AB designs because you can more effectively show that the change was caused by the intervention
• Advantages: Can quickly produce objective information; compare different interventions for a single client; allow for rapid identification of unhelpful interventions which can then be abandoned
• Limitations: For ethical reasons, it is preferable to end with an intervention period rather than with a baseline period
ABAB Designs
- Such designs are stronger designs than ABA designs because they provide greater evidence that the intervention is causing the change
- Such designs are consistent with ethical practices because they allow clients to end in the treatment phase rather than in the baseline phase
Sequencing effects
- An effect on a subject’s behavior resulting from contact with a prior condition.
- A situation in which one experimental treatment phase within the experiment influences subsequent performance during another treatment phase.
- Ex: ?
Altering antecedent conditions
a. Changing chains
b. Avoiding antecedents
c. Narrowing antecedent control
d. Re-perceiving antecedents
e. Changing self-statements
f. Change the social or physical environment
Alternating treatment design (What it is? Advantages of)
a. Treatment is characterized by rapid alteration of 2 or more interventions (use not over 3)
b. Interventions are counterbalanced (i.e. intervention one not always offered first)
c. Degree of differential effect of treatment is shown by diverging paths
d. Advantages: don’t need to collect baseline data; minimizes sequencing effects; comparison of multiple treatments can be made quickly
i. Example: child literacy intervention: small group and large group on each day—take literacy test after each group, alter in another class so time of day is not a confounding variable
e. Disadvantages: can never totally conclude that one was more effective even if they scored way better on one
Analogue assessment (What is this? What are different types of analogue assessments? advantages and disadvantage of)
a. Indirect measurement procedures that reflect how individuals behave in real-life situations (assuming this though)
b. Types: enactment, role play, video/audiotaped analogue, paper-pencil analogue, Behavioral Avoidance Test
c. Advantages: best for screening and monitoring of treatment decisions, cost-effective, can help conceptualize
d. Disadvantages: generalizability of results, procedures not standardized, instruction can produce bias
Baseline data. What is it, and why do we collect it?
a. A measure of the level of the behavior under natural (non-intervention) conditions
b. Reasons for collecting it:
i. Can serve a descriptive function by demonstrating the existing level of performance
ii. Can serve a predictive function by predicting the level of performance in the near future if an intervention is not provided
iii. Can provide data against which to measure treatment progress
Ascending vs. descending baselines: implications for interpreting intervention effects.
- Ascending baselines:
- If your goal is to increase a positive behavior, and there is reactivity during your baseline in the ascending direction, it can be difficult to determine whether or not your intervention is working. This is why ABA or ABAB designs are preferable to AB designs. - Descending baselines:
- If your goal is to decrease a problematic behavior, and there is reactivity during your baseline in the descending direction, it can be difficult to determine whether or not your intervention is working. This is why ABA or ABAB designs are preferable to AB designs.
Baseline logic
i. Prediction: When a steady state of responding has been established during baseline, one can predict that this level of behavior will continue in the absence o any changes/manipulations of environmental conditions
ii. Verification: Behavior returns to baseline levels when an intervention is removed
iii. Replication: is shown when the independent variable is reintroduced and behavior change like what was seen in the first introduction of the intervention is replicated
Functions of behavioral assessment
- Describe problem
- Identify controlling variables
a. ABC functional analysis (Antecedent, Behavior, Consequence)
b. SORCK model (Stimuli, Organism, Response, Consequence, Kontingencies) - Evaluate the impact of adaptive functioning
a. How is the problem behaving affecting the person’s life? - Select treatment interventions
- Evaluate treatment outcomes
Methods used in behavioral assessment
- Indirect methods
• Behavioral interviews (client, significant other)
• Questionnaires/ behavioral self-report
• Analogue situations (e.g., role playing)
• Self-monitoring
• Anecdotal/narrative recording
• Participant observation
• Someone else (spouse, etc) measures a clearly observable behavior
Potential problems: Inaccuracies, reactivity, non-adherence - Direct methods
• Observation in natural environment
• Electrophysiological/ electromechanical and other biological measures
Potential problems: Reactivity, inter-rater reliability, comprehensiveness, cost-effectiveness
Ways in which behavioral assessment is different from traditional assessment:
- *Whereas traditional tests involve the assessment of hypothesized constructs which are then used to predict overt behavior, the behavioral approach entails a more direct sampling of the criterion behaviors themselves **
- *Emphasis on the use of minimally inferential assessment measures/methods **
- More interested in directly measuring a behavioral excess or deficit rather than some other construct
- More interested in in vivo samples of behavior in settings such as the home, school, and workplace
- Based on assumptions more amenable to direct empirical testing
- Considers the rate of responding to be a very important variable to be measured
Behavioral chains
A series of discrete complex behaviors that must be performed in a certain order
a. Stimuli throughout chain serve as conditioned reinforcers for the previous response and discriminative stimuli for the next response
i. Best to intervene early in the chain rather than later in the chain
ii. Stimuli at beginning of chain are easiest to compete with because they are not reinforced as strongly; intervene with going to the store to buy cigarettes, not breathing in the lit cigarette
b. Forward: total task from beginning to end
c. Backward: starting with just put arms in shirt with shirt on, then start with shirt over head have to learn to pull down and put arms in
Behavioral goals: considerations is selecting target behaviors
a. Habilitation
b. Will behavior change really help the client?
c. Indirect benefits – is behavior change a necessary step?
d. Consideration of significant others
e. Normalization
f. Adaptive replacement behavior available?
General principles of behavioral interviewing
a. Operates on principle that client problems can be understood using learning principles
b. Seeks to gather specific, detailed descriptions of observable events linked to problems
i. Frequency
ii. Duration
iii. Timeline follow-back technique
c. Aims to delineate factors controlling behaviors (antecedents, consequences)
d. Greater emphasis on present circumstances than distant past
i. CBT approaches may also examine origins of maladaptive thoughts
e. Also, history of problem development is important
i. May provide clues about how problem developed form a learning perspective
Tenets of behavioral model
a. Behavior may be overt and covert:
i. Radical behaviorists would be interested in observable behaviors only
b. Emphasis on behaviors rather than abstract constructs
i. Behaviors are measurable
c. Human problems can be conceptualized in terms of excesses or deficits in behavior
d. Interest in the context in which behavior occurs (“behaviors in situations”)
i. Three term contingency: A-B-C (antecedents, behaviors, consequences)
ii. Interest in “in vivo” samples of behavior (e.g. school, home, work)
e. Assumes that a client needs to be taught new behaviors, rather than have underlying psychological processes changed
i. Treatment procedures and techniques are ways of altering an individual’s environment.
ii. Methods and rationale can be described precisely.
Narrative Recording/Structured Diaries
Interval recording
i. Select period of time, divide time into smaller intervals, record presence of behavior in each interval
a. Partial interval recording: Record if behavior occurs at any point, even if only momentarily, during an interval
a. May overestimate behavior
b. Best when used to decrease behavior
b. Whole interval recording: Record only when behavior observed during entire interval
a. May underestimate behavior
b. Best when used to increase behavior
Event recording
a. Record each instance of a behavior occurring throughout the day
i. Use only when feasible
Conditioned reinforcers
a. A conditioned reinforcer is a previously neutral stimulus. If the neutral stimulus is paired with a primary reinforcer it acquires the same reinforcement properties associated with the primary reinforcer.
i. Money is a conditioned reinforcer. The actual paper bills are not themselves reinforcing. However, the paper bills can be used to acquire primary reinforcers such as food, water, and shelter. Therefore, the paper bills become reinforcers as a result of pairing them with the acquisition of food, water, and shelter.
Generalized reinforcers
a. A generalized reinforcer is a conditioned reinforcer that has obtained the reinforcing function by pairing with many other reinforcers (such as money, a secondary generalized reinforcer).
b. Primary (conditioned) versus secondary (generalized)
i. Primary is a smile from mom or hug, but you pair that with “good girl” secondary and eventually the “good girl” alone is reinforcing
Operant Conditioning
i. Refers to relationship of behavior to the environmental events (antecedents and consequences that control behavior)
a. First described by B. F. Skinner, an American psychologist
b. Involves applying reinforcement or punishment after a behavior
c. Focuses on strengthening or weakening voluntary behaviors
ii. Positive reinforcement: give something good; behavior increases (prize)
iii. Negative reinforcement: take away something bad and behavior goes up (seat belt noise stops)
Classical Conditioning
a. Classical Conditioning
i. First described by Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist
ii. Involves placing a neutral signal before a reflex
iii. Focuses on involuntary, automatic behaviors
b. Definition: when a neutral stimulus (CS) is paired repeatedly with a stimulus (US) that elicits and unlearned response (UR), the neutral stimulus (CS) will eventually elicit a response (CR) that appears the same as the unlearned response (UR).
i. US= unconditioned stimulus (loud noise)
ii. CS=conditioned stimulus (rat)—originally the neutral stimulus becomes conditioned to also produce the cry
iii. UR= unconditioned response (cry, flee, startle—reflexive response to a loud noise)
iv. CR= conditioned response (similar to cry, flee, startle—not always identical)
v. Best for CS to precede US
vi. Behavioral responses are referred to as respondents which are unlearned, reflexes, critical to basic biological functioning
Changing criterion design – what is this; know that it is related to the concept of shaping
a. Conduct initial baseline observations on target behavior
b. Implement a series of treatment phases
c. Each treatment phase is associated with a step-wise change in the criterion for a target behavior
i. Example: reinforce for 30 minutes of walking 2xs per week, switch to only reinforcing for 3 times per week
ii. Can be shaping like a more elaborate successive approximation or can be more frequency/intensity
iii. Each phase must be long enough for the behavior to stabilize
iv. Recommended to vary length of each
v. The more times the target behavior changes to meet new criterion the stronger evidence that the behavior is under experimental control
