APPLICATION EXERCISE
Chapter 4 Identifying, Developing, and Managing Operant Antecedents
The Chapter 3 work sheet activities gave your self-management project a concrete focus by having you define in detail your outcome goal, target behavior(s), and behavioral goal(s). Those activities also had you consider how you will assess your behavior and what form your A-B-C log might take. The main objective of the present application exercise will be to form the foundation for conducting your functional assessment, which you’ll begin after reading Chapter 5.
The first task we will do for this chapter’s work sheet will be to examine your hunches about the antecedents that currently exist for your behavioral excess or deficit. Then we will finalize the procedures and materials you’ll use in assessing the target behavior(s) and the antecedents and consequences. Doing these tasks will require that you consult your work sheet from Chapter 3. Now look over the questions for Work Sheet 4.1 printed below, make notes on the book pages, and then fill out the work sheet.
Name ______________________
Date _______________________
Class Meeting Time___________
QUESTIONS FOR WORK SHEET 4.1
1. Your self-management target behavior(s): __________________________________
2. In my students’ functional assessments for their self-management projects, they have identified a great variety and number of antecedents to the behaviors they planned to change. Some examples of the more common antecedents for operant behaviors they discovered can be grouped into five categories:
· Internal physical stimuli—being hungry, feeling tired, and feeling overly aroused from having caffeine.
· External physical stimuli—seeing a tempting food, seeing a vending machine for snacks, being in a bar, driving a car, talking on the phone, and hearing or seeing a television.
· Social stimuli—seeing friends socializing, being invited by friends to go to a fast food restaurant, and seeing friends smoking or drinking.
· Emotional stimuli—feeling angry, anxious, “stressed out,” or lonely.
· Cognitive stimuli—thinking, “I’ll never do this right,” “No one likes me,” “I don’t have enough time,” “I’m fat,” or “I’m too tired.”
Do you think one or more of these antecedents are involved in your target behavior? My students discovered dozens of other antecedents as well. Do you think there are other antecedents to your behavior? Describe the hunches you have about what antecedents you’ll find are important in leading to your behavioral excess or deficit.
3. How will you make sure you will record your data immediately or very soon after each instance of the target behavior? What will your record-keeping instruments be, and where will you keep them?
4. Go back to your Work Sheet 3.1 and do two things: (a) Identify the type(s) of data you plan to collect for your target behavior—frequency, duration, magnitude, latency, and quality. (b) Decide which approach you will use to time your assessments—continuous recording, interval recording, or time sampling. Now, list below each type of data you identified and describe exactly what you will be measuring and how you will structure the timing of the assessments.
5. Refer back to Work Sheet 3.1 and compose on a computer a final draft of the format for the A-B-C log you plan to use in the functional assessment of your target behavior. Describe below any changes you made to the one you described in that work sheet.
NOTE: If you will be submitting work sheets to your instructor or a fellow student, print a copy of each sheet before submitting it.