You are a BCBA reviewing a manuscript that was written by one of the students you supervise. You are reviewing it before she submits it to a well-known ABA journal. This journal is adamant about picking out studies that include quality research. They do this by rating the quality indicators. Your student’s paper looks really good but the student seems to be missing the description of the intervention procedures. If the journal were to see this manuscript, what would they say?

You are a BCBA supervising an RBT in a research clinic. You are working with a high school aged client who wants to work on basic conversational social skills. You know how important it is to see this individual learn and use these skills in the clinic, but more importantly, use these skills in many natural settings (e.g., school, extracurricular activities, home). You meet with the RBT to talk her through the implementation of a multiple baseline design across settings for this client. The RBT asks you why you are using a multiple baseline design to measure social skills. You describe all the reasons why you prefer this design, EXCEPT: 

You are a BCBA working in a local school. You have been observing a student who immediately yells “I know, I know” every time the teacher asks the class a question. This has become incredibly disruptive in class, so the teacher would like to decrease this behavior to zero levels. You conduct an FBA and the function is most likely attention. You create an intervention that gives the student a token for each expression of the replacement behavior (i.e., raising hand with a completely quiet mouth). The student responds, but the behavior only decreases to 50% over the next month. You know that you need to implement a negative punishment procedure that includes taking away a token every time the child speaks in response to the teacher asking a question without raising his hand first. Are these punishment procedures ethical?

Unlike behaviorists, cognitive psychologists focus their inquiries on all of the following except:

What is missing in this graph?

One day, your supervisee asks you if single-case studies are inferior to group designs that implement statistical analyses. You mention that the field of single-case analysis is continually growing, but there are currently statistical calculations to acquire the magnitude of change.  The name for the calculated magnitude of change is called…

You are a BCBA working with a child in an ABA clinic. You would like to teach the child to identify specific colors. You bring out some color cards and place them close to you. You grab the blue card out of the pile and set it in front of the client. You say “touch blue” and the child touches the blue card. After this, you say “great job!” and provide a preferred toy for the child to play with for the next 30 seconds. You put the blue card in front of the child again and you say “touch blue”. The child touches the color card. What is the directive “touch blue” identified as?

Verbal behavior is unique to other forms of operant behavior in that it requires…

You are an RBT working in-home with a client. Your BCBA just accepted this client, so this is your first session with the child. After the session, the mother comes up to you and says, “how much do I owe you for this session?”. You have never been asked this question before. Which ethical step was skipped in this situation? Choose the best answer.

You work in a group home with a 20-year-old client who is non-verbal and wakes up in the middle of the night, climbs out of bed, walks out of the group home, and then walks down a local highway while cars speed past. Typically, the police pick up your client and bring him back to the group home. The staff have a team meeting about this critical issue and one therapist suggests that bars be placed on the sides and top of the bed, and then locked so that the client cannot leave his bed. This is disturbing to you as a BCBA. What is the most relevant ethical principle that could be violated in this scenario?