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Behavior Acquisition

Implementing procedures to teach new skills and behaviors

Exam Weight 25%
Sub-topics 9

Behavior acquisition (often called skill acquisition) is a core component of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). It involves implementing procedures to teach new skills and behaviors that improve a client's quality of life and independence. This section covers various teaching procedures, prompting strategies, chaining methods, and techniques for promoting generalization and maintenance of skills.

Why Behavior Acquisition Matters

Effective skill acquisition procedures are essential in ABA for several reasons:

This is a free preview. The complete Behavior Acquisition guide (with every sub-topic, worked examples, and 851+ practice questions) is in the study pack and the book.

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01

Reinforcement and Schedules

What reinforcement actually is, how a neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned reinforcer, why pairing comes before teaching, and how the four intermittent schedules behave.

02

Discrete Trial Training

How to run discrete trial training the right way, with the trial parts, prompting, error correction, and the exam traps that catch RBTs.

03

Prompting Strategies

How to use prompts and fade them, from prompt types and hierarchies to time delay and graduated guidance, with worked client examples.

04

Chaining Procedures

How to teach multi-step skills with forward chaining, backward chaining, and total task presentation, plus the task analysis that drives all three.

05

Generalization and Maintenance

How to make taught skills show up with new people and places, and keep working after teaching ends. Practical strategies, exam traps, and real client examples.

06

Shaping and Task Analysis

How to teach a skill the learner can't do yet by reinforcing successive approximations, and how to break a complex skill into teachable steps.

07

Teaching Procedures

How DTT, NET, incidental teaching, PRT, and the verbal behavior approach actually work, when to use each, and the distinctions the RBT exam loves to test.

08

Stimulus Control and Discrimination Training

What it means for a behavior to be under stimulus control, how discrimination training builds it, why random rotation matters, and how to spot a learner who looks correct but is reading the wrong cue.

09

Token Economies

How token systems work, why the backup reinforcers are the whole system, when to deliver and exchange tokens, and the RBT's lane when a plan includes response cost.