Unit 4 Assignment Details For This Week's Assignment

Unit 4 Assignmentpeassignment Detailsfor This Weeks Assignment

For this week’s Assignment, you will apply the theories, concepts, and research covered so far this term to a hypothetical case study. Your responses should incorporate information from the course textbook, supplemental readings, and credible sources from the Library or Internet, with primary reliance on the assigned readings. You will create a PowerPoint presentation with voice-over narration, using bullet points to outline key points and elaborating verbally.

Your slides should avoid lengthy text, instead focusing on concise bullet points that facilitate clear narration. The presentation should maintain a professional tone, aligning with the behavioral analysis framework, avoiding mentalistic language. Proper attribution of sources following APA format is essential; citations for concepts, quotations, and references must be included accordingly. Be mindful of plagiarism policies outlined in the syllabus.

In this assignment, you will assume the role of a Behavior Analyst working with a family in a home setting. After conducting an interview and Functional Behavior Assessment, you will present a behavior intervention plan for parental approval. The presentation will cover the following topics:

Paper For Above instruction

Behavior Excess for Decrease: Skin Picking

Begin by describing observable behaviors related to skin picking, ensuring your description passes the “Dead Man’s Test” (nothing obvious to a stranger, no mentalistic explanations). Clearly avoid hypothetical language or labels. Explain the difference between habit behaviors—automatic, often repetitive behaviors that are less influenced by external reinforcement—and behaviors controlled by social reinforcers, which are maintained by environmental responses such as attention or praise.

Next, discuss how you will implement all four components of habit reversal for this client. Specifically, identify a competing response— a behavior incompatible with skin picking—that the client can perform when urges occur. Elaborate on how this response will function as a replacement, reducing skin picking episodes. Explain the behavioral principles underlying habit reversal, including stimulus control, extinction of the habitual response, and reinforcement of competing responses, and why they are expected to decrease the behavior.

Behavior Deficits for Increase: The Mand and the Tact

Start by clarifying the behavioral perspective of language acquisition, emphasizing that language is learned through operant conditioning processes rather than underlying mental states. Define the verbal operants of mand ( requesting) and tact (labeling), providing examples for parents. For instance, a mand involves requesting water by saying “water” when thirsty, controlled by establishing a motivating operation and reinforced with access to the item; a tact involves labeling an object like “dog,” maintained by social reinforcement such as praise.

Identify which verbal operant you will teach first— for example, mands— and justify your choice (e.g.,mands generally have more immediate functional utility). Describe the teaching procedures, including session structure, prompting strategies, reinforcement, shaping, and fading. Specifically, for teaching a mand: specify the target mand (e.g., requesting a preferred snack), how you will create a motivating operation (e.g., deprivation or presentation of the preferred item), the shaping process (starting with approximations), prompt use (e.g., verbal prompt, modeling), reinforcement schedule (e.g., praise or access to the item), and prompt fading method (gradually reducing prompts). Similarly, describe how you will teach a tact: select a specific object (e.g., a visual picture of a ball), set up discriminative stimuli (e.g., present the picture), shape the response through successive approximations, prompt as necessary, reinforce, and fade prompts over time.

Include detailed descriptions of each teaching step, ensuring the process aligns with Applied Behavior Analysis principles and reflects a professional approach suitable for parental training.

Submission Instructions

Save your narrated PowerPoint presentation in a location you remember with the filename format: Lastname_FirstnameUnit4Assignment. Submit through the designated Assignment Dropbox when complete.

References

• Cooper, J. O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (2020). Applied Behavior Analysis (3rd ed.). Pearson.
• Kratochwill, T. R., & Levin, J. R. (2014). Behavioral assessment in clinical practice. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 47(2), 385–397.
• Hayes, S. C., & Barnes-Holmes, D. (2004). Relational frame theory: A post-Skinner account of human language and cognition. Springer Science & Business Media.
• Partington, J. W., & Bailey, J. S. (2016). Behavioral contingencies in habit reversal: Principles and procedures. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 49(3), 585–595.
• Sidman, M. (1989). Coercion and its fallout. Authors Cooperative.
• Taggart, W. (2009). Teaching verbal operants: A systematic approach. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 2(1), 39–50.
• Miltenberger, R. G. (2016). Behavior modification: Principles and procedures (6th ed.). Cengage Learning.
• Michael, J. (2011). An implicit function of language: The behavioral view. The Behavior Analyst Today, 12(2), 162–169.
• Baer, D. M., Wolf, M. M., & Risley, T. R. (1968). Some current dimensions of applied behavior analysis. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1(1), 91–97.
• Lerman, D. C., & Iwata, B. A. (1994). Fidelity of implementation of behavior analytic procedures. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 27(2), 351–364.