Initial Assessment Joey has been referred to the Oak City Applied Behavior Analysis Center to focus on these behaviors. A Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) has begun working on Joey’s case. The first step taken was the completion of a functional assessment. Indirect observation as well as direct observation were done. Indirect observations were …show more content…
The antecedent for the swearing behaviors are frustration, misunderstanding, and inability to successfully complete a task. Joey engages in this behavior across different environments, when in the presence of familiar and unfamiliar people, and on occasion in alone conditions when he is unaware that he is being observed. To intervene on this behavior, the use of differential reinforcement of alternative behaviors (DRA) has been chosen. A DRA procedure, as stated by Cooper et al (2007), is used as a method for decreasing an unwanted behavior by reinforcing a desirable replacement behavior for the problem behavior and placing the targeted behavior on …show more content…
The goal of the study conducted was to determine whether DRO or DRA was more effective for decreasing unwanted, problem behaviors that were occurring with four students within a classroom setting. Each student had been referred to a behavioral professional for assessment and intervention purposes due to causing verbal disruption in their classroom. Behaviors exhibited included swearing, making odd noises with their mouths and teeth, along with talking to their peers at inappropriate times, and humming. The importance of decreasing these behaviors was to allow the teacher to spend less time prompting the correct behaviors, and more time engaging in educational activities with the class. These behaviors not only were disruptive, they also had a tendency to serve as the antecedent for other behaviors to occur with others students in the