BCAT Mock Exam Practice: Vocabulary Review

A collection of vocabulary terms and definitions derived from BCAT mock exam questions covering ASD characteristics, ABA principles, skill acquisition, behavior reduction, data collection, and ethics.

Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention (EIBI)

A treatment approach for young children with ASD that typically lasts $2$ or more years and is most effective when implemented before age $4$.

Motor Skills Deficit

A challenge in physical movement, such as requiring full physical prompts to reach for handholds or having difficulty tracing a line.

Comprehensive Treatment

A level of ABA treatment that involves a high number of hours, such as approximately $35$ hours of $1:1$ sessions each week.

Executive Functioning Deficits

A category of impairments characterized by difficulty waiting, impulsivity, and frequently losing belongings.

Restricted and Fixated Interests

A behavioral characteristic of ASD involving abnormal intensity or focus on specific objects, such as a cloth napkin, or specific topics, like a single TV show.

Social-Emotional Reciprocity Impairment

A deficit in social interaction where a child may play in isolation, avoid social games, or fail to involve others in an experience they are enjoying.

Operant Conditioning

A learning process in which new skills are learned or behaviors are changed through the use of desirable consequences to increase a behavior and undesirable consequences to decrease it.

Joint Attention

A social behavior where a child shares an experience with others by laughing or pointing at an object of interest, while also involving the other person in the interaction.

Deprivation

A state in which an individual has not had access to a specific item or need, such as food, which increases the value of that item as a reinforcer.

Positive Reinforcement

The addition of a stimulus to the environment following a behavior that results in an increase in the future frequency of that behavior.

Discriminative Stimulus ($S^D$)

An antecedent stimulus that signals the availability of reinforcement for a specific response, such as a vocal instruction like "How old are you?"

Stimulus Control

When a behavior occurs more frequently in the presence of a specific stimulus than in its absence, such as a child only tying shoes when a specific BI gives the command.

Negative Punishment

The removal of a preferred stimulus or the reduction of a reinforcer following a behavior to decrease the likelihood of that behavior occurring in the future.

Conditioned Reinforcer

Also known as a secondary reinforcer, this is a stimulus that gains its reinforcing power through pairing with an unconditioned reinforcer, such as money or tokens.

Motivating Operation (MO)

An environmental variable, such as thirst or hunger, that alters the effectiveness of a reinforcer and the frequency of the behavior associated with it.

Negative Reinforcement

The removal of an aversive or undesired stimulus following a behavior, which increases the future probability of that behavior (e.g., a mother stopping a task to end a child's tantrum).

Satiation

A condition where an individual has had unlimited or frequent access to a reinforcer, making it temporarily lose its effectiveness.

Shaping

A procedure involving the reinforcement of successive approximations toward a target behavior while no longer providing reinforcement for previous approximations.

Discrete Trial Training (DTT)

A structured teaching procedure that uses multiple trials in a rapid sequence, often used to increase learning opportunities.

Natural Environment Teaching (NET)

An instructional technique where teaching trials are embedded into natural activities and settings, such as practicing color identification during a walk.

Backward Chaining

A teaching method where the trainer prompts the learner through all steps of a task except the last one, which the learner completes to get the reinforcer.

Generalization

The ability to perform a learned skill across different settings, people, stimuli, or responses.

Prompt Fading

The systematic and gradual reduction of a prompt over successive trials until the learner can perform the target behavior independently.

Errorless Learning

A teaching technique that uses immediate and effective prompts to ensure the learner provides a correct response, thereby minimizing the chance for errors, often used when teaching new skills.

Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC)

Methods used to supplement or replace spoken language, such as using picture icons or head nodding to request items or breaks.

Premack Principle

A contingency management strategy where a more-preferred activity is used to reinforce a less-preferred activity (e.g., "First finish the puzzle, then you can go on the swing").

Escape Function

A function of behavior in which the individual engages in challenging behavior to avoid or delay a non-preferred task or situation.

Extinction Burst

A temporary increase in the frequency, intensity, or variability of a behavior when reinforcement for that behavior is first withheld.

Differential Reinforcement of Other Behavior (DRO)

A procedure where reinforcement is delivered after a specified interval during which a target problem behavior does not occur.

High-Probability Request Sequence

An antecedent intervention where the BI presents $3$ to $5$ tasks with a high history of compliance before presenting a task with a low history of compliance.

Restitutional Overcorrection

A consequence for problem behavior where the learner must repair the environment to a state significantly better than it was before the behavior (e.g., cleaning up all toys after throwing one).

Spontaneous Recovery

The reappearance of a previously extinguished behavior after a period of time has passed since the behavior was last seen.

Operational Definition

A clear, objective description of a behavior that allows it to be measured consistently by different observers.

Duration

A measurement of the total amount of time a behavior occurs from its onset to its offset.

Latency

The measurement of the time that elapsed between the presentation of a stimulus ($S^D$) and the start of the response.

Inter-Observer Agreement (IOA)

A measure of the degree to which two or more independent observers report the same observed values after measuring the same events.

Partial Interval Recording

A data collection method where the observer records whether a behavior occurred at any point during a specific interval.

Confidentiality

The ethical and legal requirement to protect a client's private information, including their name, diagnosis, and personal health information (PHI).

Dual Relationship

An unethical situation where a professional enters into a non-professional role with a client or a client's family member, such as being a health provider for a family friend.