RBT practice test: Behavior Acquisition, set 8

Set 8 of 12 for content area C, Behavior Acquisition (19 of the 75 scored exam questions). Every answer is explained.

20 questions

Question 1Using incidental teaching, an RBT is teaching a client to say "push" on a park swing for the first time. Which statement is accurate?
Show answer
D: It is acquisition, because the client is learning a new skill. Whether a target is acquisition or maintenance depends on whether the skill is new or mastered, not on the teaching format or setting. A new skill taught during play is still acquisition.
- A: Natural settings are used for teaching new skills as well as mastered ones.
- B: Natural reinforcers are used in acquisition too; the type of reinforcer does not decide the phase.
- C: Baseline means measuring before teaching, and teaching is happening here.
Task C.9 · 40-hour curriculum section A
Question 2During shaping, the client has not met the new criterion for several sessions, and the plan gives no rule for what to do. What should the RBT do?
Show answer
A: Follow the plan and share the data with the supervisor promptly. When progress stalls and the plan gives no rule, the supervisor needs the data to decide whether to change the step size, add prompts or make another change.
- B: Lowering the criterion is a supervisor decision when the plan has no rule.
- C: Adding prompts changes the procedure without supervisor direction.
- D: Stopping a program is also a change the supervisor must make.
Task C.10 · 40-hour curriculum section E
Question 3A client's token plan has no response cost. After earning three tokens, the client throws a pencil. What should the RBT do with the earned tokens?
Show answer
C: Leave the tokens and follow the plan for throwing. Earned tokens stay with the client unless the plan includes response cost. The RBT responds to the throwing as the plan directs and can report the behavior to the supervisor.
- A: Removing a token is response cost, which this plan does not include.
- B: Removing all tokens is an unplanned punishment procedure.
- D: Threatening to take tokens adds a contingency that is not in the plan.
Task C.11 · 40-hour curriculum section E
Question 4The plan states: "Praise the first hand raise that occurs after an unpredictable amount of time has passed, averaging 3 minutes. Hand raises before that time are not praised." Which schedule is this?
Show answer
A: Variable interval 3 minutes. Reinforcement goes to the first response after an amount of time that changes around an average of 3 minutes. That is a variable interval (VI 3-minute) schedule.
- B: A variable ratio schedule depends on the number of responses, not on time passing.
- C: A fixed interval schedule uses the same interval every time, not an unpredictable one.
- D: A variable-time schedule delivers reinforcement after varying times even if the client does not raise a hand.
Task C.1 · 40-hour curriculum section A
Question 5How would the team know that tokens have become reinforcers for a client?
Show answer
D: The target behavior increases when it produces tokens.. Like any reinforcer, a token is shown to be a reinforcer by its effect: the behavior that produces it increases. Signs of interest are not enough.
- A: Smiling may show interest but does not show that tokens strengthen behavior.
- B: Asking about backups does not show that tokens strengthen the target behavior.
- C: Holding on to tokens does not show that earning them strengthens behavior.
Task C.2 · 40-hour curriculum section E
Question 6In discrete-trial teaching, what is a discriminative stimulus (SD)?
Show answer
B: A stimulus that signals reinforcement is available for a response. An SD is a stimulus in whose presence a response has been reinforced, so the response is more likely when it is present. In DTT the SD is usually the instruction together with the materials.
- A: That describes an S-delta, not an SD.
- C: Extra help is a prompt; the SD is the instruction or cue itself.
- D: That describes a reinforcer, which follows the response.
Task C.3 · 40-hour curriculum section E
Question 7While looking at a picture book, a child points to a truck and says "truck." The adult says "Yes, a red truck!" Which verbal operant did the child use?
Show answer
C: Tact. A tact is a response controlled by something the speaker sees, hears or otherwise contacts, and it is maintained by social reinforcement such as the adult's comment.
- A: A mand is controlled by wanting something and reinforced by getting it; here the child named a picture.
- B: An echoic repeats someone else's words; no one said "truck" first.
- D: An intraverbal responds to someone else's words; here the picture controlled the response.
Task C.4 · 40-hour curriculum section A · 40-hour curriculum section E
Question 8A task analysis for making a sandwich has 12 steps. In today's session, the client completed 9 steps independently. What percentage of steps were completed independently?
Show answer
B: 75%. Divide independent steps by total steps and multiply by 100: 9 / 12 = 0.75, or 75%.
- A: 25% is the percentage of steps not completed independently (3 / 12).
- C: 90% of 12 steps would be 10.8 steps, more than the 9 completed.
- D: 66.7% would be 8 of 12 steps, not 9.
Task C.5 · 40-hour curriculum section E · 40-hour curriculum section C
Question 9At a vocational site, an adult client sorts hardware: bolts go in the left bin and nuts go in the right bin. Correct sorting earns praise and points toward break time. For placing an item in the left bin, what is the discriminative stimulus?
Show answer
B: The item in hand being a bolt. Putting an item in the left bin is reinforced only when the item is a bolt, so holding a bolt is the SD for that response, and holding a nut is an S-delta for it.
- A: Praise and points are consequences that follow correct sorting; an SD comes before the response.
- C: The left bin is there on every trial, for nuts and bolts alike, so it cannot signal which item belongs in it.
- D: That is motivation (a motivating operation), not the stimulus that signals which response will be reinforced.
Task C.6 · 40-hour curriculum section E
Question 10In ABA teaching, what is a prompt?
Show answer
A: Added help given before or during a response to make the correct response more likely. A prompt is a supplementary stimulus added to the instruction or materials so the learner is likely to respond correctly. Because it is not part of the natural situation, a prompt is planned to be faded.
- B: That describes a reinforcer, which follows the response.
- C: That describes an S-delta.
- D: That is prompt-level data, not the prompt itself.
Task C.7 · 40-hour curriculum section E
Question 11A plan directs the RBT to vary the wording of an instruction ("Put it away," "Clean up," "Toys in the bin"), where they sit and which room they use during teaching. Which generalization strategy is this?
Show answer
C: Training loosely. Training loosely means varying noncritical parts of teaching, such as wording, position and room, so that no single irrelevant feature gains control of the response.
- A: Programming common stimuli adds stimuli from the target setting to teaching; this plan varies features instead.
- B: Indiscriminable contingencies concern how reinforcement is scheduled, not how instructions and settings are varied.
- D: Self-management teaches the client to monitor or manage their own behavior, which is not described here.
Task C.8 · 40-hour curriculum section E
Question 12In the same playroom where colors were taught, an RBT asks a client to name colors a few times during play and gives praise now and then. The client has mastered all of these colors. Which procedure is this?
Show answer
A: A maintenance procedure. Occasional practice of mastered skills with intermittent reinforcement is a maintenance procedure. Because the setting is the same one used for teaching, it is not a generalization probe.
- B: Acquisition is teaching skills not yet learned; these colors are already mastered.
- C: Baseline measures skills before teaching, not mastered skills.
- D: Stimulus fading removes an added cue during teaching, which is not described.
Task C.9 · 40-hour curriculum section A
Question 13A client speaks so quietly that others cannot hear. The plan reinforces speech that is slightly louder than usual, then gradually louder still. Which dimension of behavior is being shaped?
Show answer
A: Magnitude. Loudness is the force or intensity of a response, its magnitude. The form of speech stays the same while the plan shapes this one dimension.
- B: Duration is how long a response lasts, not how loud it is.
- C: Latency is the time from a cue to the start of a response.
- D: Frequency is how many times a response occurs, not how loud each one is.
Task C.10 · 40-hour curriculum section E
Question 14Why might the plan ask the RBT to record how many tokens the client earns and exchanges each session?
Show answer
C: So the supervisor can see how the system is working. Token data show how often target behaviors occur and whether the system is effective. The supervisor uses them to decide on changes.
- A: Backup reinforcers are part of treatment, not something the client pays for with money.
- B: Changing the exchange rate is the supervisor's decision.
- D: Sharing one client's data publicly would breach confidentiality.
Task C.11 · 40-hour curriculum section E
Question 15In applied behavior analysis, what makes a reinforcement procedure "positive"?
Show answer
D: A stimulus is added after the behavior, and the behavior increases in the future.. "Positive" means a stimulus is added (presented) after the behavior, and "reinforcement" means the behavior occurs more often in the future. It has nothing to do with whether the stimulus seems pleasant.
- A: Removing a stimulus and seeing the behavior increase is negative reinforcement.
- B: Adding a stimulus that makes the behavior decrease is positive punishment.
- C: Delivering a stimulus on a time schedule regardless of behavior is noncontingent reinforcement, not a contingent reinforcement procedure.
Task C.1 · 40-hour curriculum section A
Question 16During pairing, an RBT sometimes says "Super!" right before giving a preferred item, but also often gives items without saying it and often says "Super!" when no item follows. What is the main problem with this procedure?
Show answer
D: "Super!" does not reliably signal the item, which weakens the pairing.. For a neutral stimulus to become a conditioned reinforcer, it should reliably come before or with the established reinforcer. When the word often occurs without the item, and the item often comes without the word, the word predicts little.
- A: Frequent, consistent pairing helps conditioning; the problem is that the pairing is inconsistent.
- B: Delivering the item right after the word is the correct timing for pairing.
- C: The issue is not satiation; the word is not consistently associated with the item.
Task C.2 · 40-hour curriculum section E
Question 17The RBT holds up a red block and says "What color?" The client does not answer, so the RBT says "Red." In this trial, the RBT saying "Red" is:
Show answer
C: A response prompt in the form of a vocal model. Saying the answer for the client to repeat is a vocal model prompt, a type of response prompt added after the SD to help the client respond correctly. It is faded as the plan directs.
- A: The SD is the block with the question "What color?"; "Red" was added help.
- B: The client had not yet responded, so this is not a consequence.
- D: A stimulus prompt changes the materials themselves; this was a spoken model.
Task C.3 · 40-hour curriculum section E
Question 18A child's plan targets color names. Which activity is an example of teaching colors naturalistically?
Show answer
B: Asking which paint color the child wants while painting. Embedding the target in an activity the child is already doing, with the chosen paint as the reinforcer, is naturalistic teaching.
- A: Repeated instructions with cards at a table are discrete-trial teaching.
- C: Repeating one target in a block is massed trial teaching.
- D: Watching a video does not create a learning opportunity with a response and reinforcer.
Task C.4 · 40-hour curriculum section E
Question 19A client washes their hands independently at the clinic but not at the school sink, which has a different faucet. What should the RBT do?
Show answer
B: Report the pattern to the supervisor with data. A skill that does not carry over to a new setting is a generalization issue. The RBT documents and reports it so the supervisor can plan for it.
- A: Changing the task analysis is the supervisor's decision.
- C: Limiting the setting changes the plan and does not address generalization.
- D: Scoring steps the client did not do alone as independent makes the data inaccurate.
Task C.5 · 40-hour curriculum section F
Question 20In a school sight-word program, a student is nearly always correct with the RBT but much less accurate when a coworker runs the same program. The RBT realizes that after giving the instruction, they tend to look at the correct card while the coworker keeps their eyes on the student. What is the most likely explanation?
Show answer
C: The RBT's glance is partly controlling the student's choices. An unplanned cue such as a glance can become an SD for the correct choice. When the glance is absent, accuracy drops because the printed word alone does not yet control the response. The RBT should keep a neutral gaze and tell the supervisor what they noticed.
- A: A mastery criterion guides decisions about when a target is learned; it does not change the student's accuracy within a session.
- B: An extinction burst is a temporary increase in behavior when reinforcement stops; nothing suggests the coworker stopped reinforcing correct responses.
- D: Lower accuracy with the coworker shows the skill has not carried over; full generalization would mean similar accuracy with both.
Task C.6 · 40-hour curriculum section E

Answer every question to see your score.

What this test covers

Questions in this test by task
Task	Questions
C.1 Positive and negative reinforcement	2
C.2 Conditioned reinforcers	2
C.3 Discrete-trial teaching	2
C.4 Naturalistic teaching	2
C.5 Task analysis and chaining	2
C.6 Discrimination training	2
C.7 Prompting and prompt fading	1
C.8 Generalization	1
C.9 Maintenance vs. acquisition	2
C.10 Shaping	2
C.11 Token economies	2

6 easier, 7 exam-level and 7 harder questions. Each task link opens its study page.

Question 1Using incidental teaching, an RBT is teaching a client to say "push" on a park swing for the first time. Which statement is accurate?

Question 2During shaping, the client has not met the new criterion for several sessions, and the plan gives no rule for what to do. What should the RBT do?

Question 3A client's token plan has no response cost. After earning three tokens, the client throws a pencil. What should the RBT do with the earned tokens?

Question 4The plan states: "Praise the first hand raise that occurs after an unpredictable amount of time has passed, averaging 3 minutes. Hand raises before that time are not praised." Which schedule is this?

Question 5How would the team know that tokens have become reinforcers for a client?

Question 6In discrete-trial teaching, what is a discriminative stimulus (SD)?

Question 7While looking at a picture book, a child points to a truck and says "truck." The adult says "Yes, a red truck!" Which verbal operant did the child use?

Question 8A task analysis for making a sandwich has 12 steps. In today's session, the client completed 9 steps independently. What percentage of steps were completed independently?

Question 9At a vocational site, an adult client sorts hardware: bolts go in the left bin and nuts go in the right bin. Correct sorting earns praise and points toward break time. For placing an item in the left bin, what is the discriminative stimulus?

Question 10In ABA teaching, what is a prompt?

Question 11A plan directs the RBT to vary the wording of an instruction ("Put it away," "Clean up," "Toys in the bin"), where they sit and which room they use during teaching. Which generalization strategy is this?

Question 12In the same playroom where colors were taught, an RBT asks a client to name colors a few times during play and gives praise now and then. The client has mastered all of these colors. Which procedure is this?

Question 13A client speaks so quietly that others cannot hear. The plan reinforces speech that is slightly louder than usual, then gradually louder still. Which dimension of behavior is being shaped?

Question 14Why might the plan ask the RBT to record how many tokens the client earns and exchanges each session?

Question 15In applied behavior analysis, what makes a reinforcement procedure "positive"?

Question 16During pairing, an RBT sometimes says "Super!" right before giving a preferred item, but also often gives items without saying it and often says "Super!" when no item follows. What is the main problem with this procedure?

Question 17The RBT holds up a red block and says "What color?" The client does not answer, so the RBT says "Red." In this trial, the RBT saying "Red" is:

Question 18A child's plan targets color names. Which activity is an example of teaching colors naturalistically?

Question 19A client washes their hands independently at the clinic but not at the school sink, which has a different faucet. What should the RBT do?

What this test covers