Pros And Cons Of Operant Conditioning

3.0 Operant conditioning in Speech- Language Pathologists (SLPs) Furthermore, in order for the SLPs to apply the operant conditioning, they must have a better understanding of behavioural principles such as Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA). Baer, Wolf, & Risley (1987) defined ABA as “the systematic application and evaluation of principles behaviour analysis to the improvement of specific behaviours.” Learning, stimuli, responses, consequences, positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, punishment, and extinction are the terms and principles that often used in ABA. According to ASHA, the techniques used in this analysis including prompting, cuing, modelling, chaining, differential reinforcement, as well as fading. Thus, based on some researches, it is applicable in aphasia rehabilitation. Aphasia means a communication disorder that results from damage to the parts of the brain (typically in left hemisphere) which …show more content…
It is maybe due to age of the patients, and the experience of a seasoned clinician (Folsom & Diefendorf, 1999). For instance, “Thompson and Weber demonstrated the rate of success in obtaining detailed information with conditioned play audiometry (CPA) is limited for children under the age of 30 months. In addition, experience with CPA indicates that reliable threshold responses can be obtained when auditory stimulus response control has been established and response criterion are maintained” (as cited by Folsom & Diefendorf, 1999). Plus, according to Scruggs, Prieto & Zucker (1981), it is also time-consuming since the audiologists and SLPs need to encounter the child’s problematic behaviours and thus it will lead them to attempt many trials during their assessment and