Assess Adaptation After a Rule or Contingency Changes

To assess adaptation after a rule or contingency changes, version Hugo's old and new rule, actual contingency, change signal, exposure, response, outcomes, feedback, prompts, social consequences, access, health, direct experience, and phase timing. Use safe ordinary conditions and preserve both phases. Never create danger, deprivation, deception, financial loss, communication loss, or distress simply to test whether behavior changes.

Version the change precisely

Record old and new wording, source, effective time, changed contingency, notification route, audience, exception, access mode, and the person's prior exposure.

Create compatible phase measures

Use the same eligible opportunity and response definition when possible. Record direct outcomes, social feedback, prompts, errors, invalid events, and time since change.

Repair access before interpretation

Check language, AAC, sensory and motor access, links, materials, partner knowledge, timing, health, and stress. A repaired system starts a dated phase.

Use safe evidence

Observe ordinary changes, records, and low-risk simulations. Preserve emergency and protective routes and avoid experiments that impose meaningful loss or distress.

Use this sequence to assess adaptation

Version Hugo's rules and contingencies, verify notification and access, preserve phases, measure ordinary outcomes, ask Hugo, repair gaps, and stop when the practical question is resolved.

Build Hugo's rule-change adaptation review

Create one versioned rule-change adaptation review for the public library room booking. Include Hugo's priority, rule wording and provenance, source, delivery, access, response class, stated and operating contingencies, social and direct consequences, prompts, models, context, history, direct experience, choice, invalidity, missingness, withdrawal, alternative control, evidence limits, qualified owner, correction, and reassessment trigger. Store only decision-relevant information with role-limited access.

Set a stabilization rule for the repaired phase before reviewing the graph. Require current access, consistent notification, and enough ordinary opportunities to distinguish a system repair from a one-time successful booking. Record any return to the prior workflow.

Validate Hugo's rule evidence

Reproduce 12 valid old-rule opportunities with 10/12 completion and 12 planned new-rule opportunities with three invalid link failures. The new-rule record therefore shows 9/12 completion across all planned opportunities and 9/9 among the access-ready opportunities after repair. Keep all-planned coverage and valid performance separate. Verify rule versions, signal, exposure, feedback, prompts, access, outcomes, experience, invalidity, and phase dates.

Connect Hugo's evidence to a decision

Hugo's review distinguishes communication and access repair from a clinical source-of-control question. If accurate exposure and ordinary outcomes resolve the pattern, the team can close the assessment. Further probes require clear decision value and safe conditions.

Work through Hugo's example

The library changes room booking from a front-desk rule to a mobile check-in rule. Hugo has 12 valid opportunities under the old version and completes 10/12. Under the new version, 12 opportunities are planned, but the first three are invalid because the deep link does not work. After repair, he completes all nine access-ready opportunities. Report 9/12 across all planned new-rule opportunities, 9/9 access-ready completion, and the three link failures separately. The phase record points to access repair rather than persistent outdated-rule control. Preserve every planned and valid opportunity, rule version, accessible exposure, response, alternative, prompt, model, social consequence, direct outcome, timing, access and health state, withdrawal, invalid event, correction, and unresolved item. This fictional example demonstrates one assessment control. It supplies no diagnosis, obedience standard, universal rule-following target, treatment effect, legal conclusion, coverage decision, payment promise, or outcome guarantee for Hugo.

Address Hugo's main interpretation risk

Combining 9/12 before and after link repair hides the system change. Calling early errors rule insensitivity ignores unusable access. Intentionally leaving the link broken or arranging lost reservations would create avoidable harm. Rapid change also cannot prove absence of rule control. Review provenance, access, understanding, agreement, assent, prompts, models, task cues, social consequences, direct contingencies, history, context, health, preference, direct experience, and design strength separately. A convincing sequence cannot make an unsafe, inaccessible, unwanted, unauthorized, or inaccurate rule clinically appropriate.

Keep scope and authority clear for Hugo

For Hugo's rule-change adaptation review, the CASP public summary supplies high-level ABA behavioral-health-treatment scope for autistic people, with licensed detail outside this page. The current BACB Ethics Code addresses competence, client involvement, consent and assent when applicable, assessment, medical needs, risk, data, documentation, and evaluation for covered people. The BACB outline is examination content. These sources supply no individualized rule assessment, legal authority, safety directive, or requirement that Hugo comply.

Use applied rule-following studies cautiously for Hugo

Tarbox and colleagues reported a multiple-exemplar teaching study involving three children with autism and a preliminary rule-following repertoire. A later rule-specification study extended this line to rules naming behavior and consequence. These small teaching studies illustrate specific arrangements. They offer no universal sequence, mastery rule, treatment effect, or source-of-control conclusion for Hugo.

Treat rule-based insensitivity as a bounded research claim for Hugo

The systematic review examined adult laboratory studies that began with rules corresponding to task contingencies and then changed those contingencies. It found operational and validity limitations across the literature. Those studies do not authorize exposing Hugo to inaccurate safety rules, meaningful loss, deception, deprivation, or distress, and they do not turn slow adaptation into a trait.

Keep theoretical labels provisional for Hugo

The bridging paper discusses rule-governed behavior alongside derived stimulus relations and notes definitional challenges around pliance, tracking, and augmenting. Galizio's classic adult laboratory experiments examined instructions and monetary-loss avoidance under narrow arrangements. These sources organize questions about social, verbal, and direct histories; they do not prove which source controls Hugo's behavior.

Preserve assent and communication access for Hugo

Breaux and Smith propose individualized assent and withdrawal practices while describing an evolving evidence base. Their paper is practice guidance rather than a separate BACB mandate. ASHA's AAC portal says AAC users should always have access to their tools or devices. Give Hugo an accessible way to ask, correct, disagree, accept, pause, decline, or withdraw, and respond under governing consent, assent, safety, and legal sources.

Choose Hugo's next bounded action

Hugo chooses a text link plus printed backup and asks the library to display the effective date. The repaired rule begins a new phase with the failed link retained in history. Record the qualified owner, source evidence, effective date, current rule and context version, ordinary supports, access and health state, implementation check, accessible explanation, disagreement route, and reassessment trigger. Preserve the earlier record when wording, speakers, responses, settings, systems, consequences, health, or priorities change. A repaired arrangement creates a dated phase rather than an error in Hugo's prior performance.

Close Hugo's rule review

Review the rule-change adaptation review with Hugo, the qualified behavior analyst, relevant partners, access owners, and specialists named in the manifest. Confirm that exposure, access, understanding, agreement, assent, performance, rule-contingency correspondence, prompt or model control, social consequences, direct control, and theoretical hypotheses remain separate; every denominator is reproducible; AAC and basic access remain protected; urgent needs received action; and conclusions stay bounded to sampled conditions. Keep this page draft and noindex until every required review is complete.

How to Assess Adaptation After a Rule or Contingency Changes