Professional practice of behavior analysis

operants were reinforced the associated action was more likely to continue; otherwise they would slowly stop. Both positive and negative reinforcement are effective reinforcers of actions. Positive reinforcement is carried out to “[strengthen] a behavior by providing a consequence an individual…

Applied behavior analysis is a type of strategy to help teach children with autism functional skills and provide continuous assessment of their progress. This approach is based on positive reinforcement or rewarding of desired behaviors. This meaning that if a child is accomplishing a behavior that you want them to do then they would receive a reward. In this strategy it is also meant to help punish the unwanted behaviors by the students. Children with autism have…

Operant conditioning is a type of learning in which a person modifies their behavior through positive and negative consequences, or as a result of positive and negative reinforcement. Unlike classical conditioning where behaviors are reflexive and involuntary, operant conditioning is a voluntary behavior. In 1905, Edward L. Thorndike conducted an experiment where he placed a hungry cat inside a “puzzle box”, and a food dish on the outside. The cat upon pressing a lever could free itself from…

to develop my teaching and learning skills through applying my applied behavioural analysis (ABA) knowledge and gaining a practical experience while performing hands-on activities with the autism children. The four goals that I would like to achieve in my field placement are two generic skills – effective communication skills and team work skills and two behavioural skills- reinforcement and writing task analysis. 1. Generic Skills- a) Effective Communication Skills- I believe that been a…

John Broadus Watson was an American psychologist as well as a radical environmental determinist. He believed that humans could be “conditioned” like training animals. Watson promoted a upcoming change in psychology through a behaviourist approach. Based on Pavlov’s observations ,Watson proposed that the process of classical conditioning could explain all aspects of human psychology. Watson whole heartedly denied the existence of the mind and consciousness. According to Watson different…

in need of help in order to lose weight so that he will be able to make the football team, there are ways in which you can help. The principles of operant conditioning will get him started on his weigh loss journey. To begin, one should create a behavior modification program based upon the ideas of operant conditioning. There are two main categories of operant conditioning discovered by B.F. Skinner. The first being reinforcement and the second being punishment. Reinforcement is an outcome that…

I would give Jason the diagnosis of having autism. From what is described by his behavior, he matches a lot of DSM-V criteria for having the diagnosis of autism. When talking to the school psychologist, he did not make eye contact, demonstrating the impairment of using eye contact during social situations. His school psychologist also noted that Jason also did not appropriately respond to social cues nor was interested to building a relationship with her. This further demonstrates that Jason…

Psychology 201 has been a very intriguing course for me so far. I really enjoyed learning about how the brain works and how big of a role it plays in our lives. Some specific areas of psychology I enjoyed studying were Operant Conditioning, the theories of motivation, and Jean-Dominique Bauby. Operant Conditioning was a familiar concept, even though I was not familiar with the specific terminology. I think reinforcement and punishment are very interesting topics that apply to everyone's lives.…

B.F. Skinner began his famous research into the world of Psychology after being heavily influenced by John Watson and Ivan Pavlov. As stated in class, John Watson shifted from the focus of study on the mind and paid closer attention to observable behavior. Watson focused on what people might do rather than what the might experience. Watson, of course, was also influenced by someone and that someone was Ivan Pavlov. As observed in class, Pavlov used his dogs to show that a stimulus (feeding his…

at school, but at home this could alter the SD. Therefore, it is important for the behavior analyst to determine which procedure to use. The authors stated that pre-attending skills are important when developing stimulus control (Cooper et al.,(2007, p.400).For example, if the client does not have the programming of making eye intact, it would be hard for the student to watch the behavior analyst model the behavior and follow suite. Another important note is stimulus salience, which is the…