RBT Skill Acquisition Quiz

A skill acquisition plan focuses on teaching procedures, target behaviors, mastery criteria, materials, and data collection. Family history and medical records are not essential components of the instructional plan itself.

Proper session preparation requires reviewing the teaching plan and ensuring all materials are ready. This ensures smooth implementation and prevents interruptions during teaching trials.

Fixed ratio 4 (FR4) means reinforcement is delivered after every 4th correct response. The number of responses required remains constant, making it a fixed ratio schedule.

Computer time is a conditioned reinforcer because it gained its reinforcing value through learning and pairing with other reinforcing experiences, rather than being biologically important like food or water.

Discrete trial teaching involves clear presentation of stimuli, waiting for responses, providing feedback, and structured inter-trial intervals. This creates distinct learning opportunities with clear beginnings and endings.

Prompts should be provided after the discriminative stimulus (instruction) but before the client has a chance to make an error. This ensures success while teaching the correct response.

Incidental teaching uses naturally occurring opportunities within preferred activities to embed learning. Emma capitalized on the client’s natural interest in cars to teach color identification.

Naturalistic teaching occurs in natural environments using real-life situations and motivating contexts. Teaching “more” during actual snack time uses the child’s natural motivation for food.

Task analysis involves breaking complex skills into smaller, sequential steps that can be taught individually. Each step should be observable, measurable, and lead logically to the next step.

Backward chaining begins with the client completing only the final step independently, then gradually adding earlier steps. This allows immediate access to natural reinforcement (task completion).

Forward chaining teaches steps in their natural sequence, with the client mastering each step before adding the next. The chain is built progressively from beginning to end.

Discrimination training involves differential reinforcement – reinforcing correct responses to specific stimuli while not reinforcing the same response to different stimuli. This teaches when to respond appropriately.

Stimulus control transfer involves systematically fading prompts so that control moves from artificial prompts to the natural discriminative stimulus (verbal instruction “clap hands”).

Most-to-least prompting begins with the most intrusive prompt (physical) and systematically fades to less intrusive prompts, eventually achieving independence.

Gestural prompts involve movements or pointing that indicate the desired response. Pointing to one’s own head provides a visual cue for the client to touch their head.

Generalization is promoted by teaching across multiple exemplars including different people, settings, times, and response variations. This helps skills transfer to natural environments.

Maintenance refers to the continued demonstration of learned skills after formal teaching has ended. Good maintenance indicates durable learning that persists over time.

Shaping involves reinforcing successive approximations toward a target behavior. Each step gets progressively closer to the final goal, with reinforcement criteria becoming more stringent.

Shaping creates new behaviors by reinforcing gradual improvements toward a goal, while chaining links existing behaviors in sequence. Shaping changes response form; chaining organizes existing responses.

Tokens are generalized conditioned reinforcers because they can be exchanged for multiple backup reinforcers and gain value through pairing with various rewards.

Effective token economies require clear target behaviors, exchange ratios, backup reinforcers, and exchange schedules. Automatic daily resets would undermine the system’s effectiveness and motivation.

Stimulus control has transferred from the external picture prompt to internal motivating operations (thirst). The client now responds to natural antecedent conditions rather than artificial prompts.

Complex discrimination involves teaching responses to multiple stimulus conditions with specific criteria. The client must learn when to respond “big,” when “small,” and when not to respond at all.

Naturalistic teaching capitalizes on the learner’s natural motivation and occurs in natural contexts, which typically leads to better generalization and more meaningful learning, though initial acquisition may be slower.