PS560 Principles of ABA
Your active participation in the weekly discussions is important to the shared learning experience. Active discussions will also develop your community of professionals. Please participate as early in the week as possible to help promote a robust discussion.
After you have completed the readings, post your initial response to the following discussion. Your post should respond to all parts of the topic(s) in complete sentences, and should extend the discussion of the group by including original thoughts or ideas with support from multiple academic outside sources and/or course materials, correctly using APA style, both in-text and complete reference at the end of the post.
After you have submitted your initial post, review other posts and respond to multiple classmates. Your response to other classmates should ask follow-up questions or provide additional ideas that expand on the topic. Be sure to post your responses over multiple days throughout the unit week as this helps promote a real discussion. Refer to your Discussion Board Rubric for a specific grading explanation.
Applying Differential Reinforcement Procedures
Complete the readings and the interactive learning activity before you attempt the discussion question.
Define each of the differential reinforcement procedures, noting how the two components of each procedure affect the occurrence of problem and desired behaviors. Then, choose a personal behavior, or the behavior of someone in your environment (maintaining confidentiality, of course!). Choose a Differential Reinforcement procedure and explain how you would apply that procedure to decrease the problem behavior and increase a desired behavior, taking into consideration the thoughts on schedules of reinforcement and matching law covered last week.
Review two of your classmate's responses using following ideas as a guide:
- Are the components of DR procedures clearly noted?
- Provide constructive feedback on the application of the chosen DR procedure.
- What suggestions for an alternate DR procedure might you recommend?
Operant Conditioning and Learning by Contingencies
Read the following chapter in your text:
- Chapter 25 in Cooper, Heron, & Heward’s Applied Behavior Analysis
Read the following articles, which offer some “classic” perspectives on Applied Behavior Analysis, along with articles that explore more modern applications:
An assessment of differential reinforcement procedures for learners with autism spectrum disorder. Vladescu et al. (2017)
Comparing skill acquisition under varying onsets of differential reinforcement: A preliminary analysis. Campandaro et al. (2019)
Reducing rapid eating in adults with Down syndrome: Using token reinforcement to increase interresponse time between bites. May and Catrone (2021)
Review the key terms and concepts that are essential for the field of Applied Behavior Analysis.