Understanding Antecedents for Behavioral Change

1. Operant Antecedents Chapter 3

2. Antecedents • Overt or Covert • Immediate or Distant

3. Identifying Antecedents • Functional Analysis • behavioral excesses • antecedents may be too frequent • behavioral deficits • antecedents may be too infrequent

4. Learning Antecedents • Discrimination learning • Discriminative stimuli • Differential reinforcement • SD • S∆ • Stimulus Generalization • Stimulus equivalence

5. Stimulus Control • Prompting • Physical guidance prompts • Verbal prompts • Pictorial prompts • Gestural prompts • Auditory prompts

6. Stimulus Control • Fading • errorless learning • decreased assistance • increasing assistance • delayed prompting • Speed in fading

7. Modeling and Instructions • Guidelines • Fade to reduce reliance • Match to the person’s abilities • Describe consequences • Reasons for behavior • Complex behaviors broken down

8. Application of Modeling and Instruction • Fade these prompts • Match the level of the information with the ability of the learner • Make consequences apparent • Break down complex tasks into manageable tasks • Reinforce models • Reinforce observers for attending • Use models who are similar to the observer • Use more than one model

9. Cognitive Antecedents • Covert self-statements • self-instruction • strategies • rules • logical thinking

10. Antecedent Chains • Target behaviors can involve a complex series of links that lead to the completion of a task • Links become antecedents • Disrupting the links can serve to decrease behavior

11. Managing Antecedents • Decrease behavior by • Reduce or avoid antecedents • Narrow antecedent control • SD to S∆ • Cognitive strategies • Change characteristics of antecedents

12. Managing Antecedents: Tips • Look carefully at all potential antecedents • Assess overt and covert antecedents • Ask others to help identify antecedents • Fade prompts in small steps