Audit Differential Reinforcement During Shaping

To audit differential reinforcement during shaping, compare every due opportunity with Priya's active response criterion, observed value, consequence due, consequence delivered, delay, magnitude, quality, duration, and access outside teaching. Record what follows earlier functional responses, omissions, extra deliveries, and staff deviations. Keep reinforcement integrity separate from response change, client preference, assent, basic access, and practical outcome.

Freeze the active contingency

Record Priya's criterion version, qualifying response, consequence, timing tolerance, magnitude, quality, duration, choice process, owner, and effective date before auditing delivery.

Build a due-event denominator

Include every opportunity when the programmed criterion is met and a consequence becomes due. Retain omissions, late delivery, substitutions, reduced duration, and missing records.

Record extra deliveries separately

Consequences can occur after below-criterion responses, outside planned opportunities, or independently of responding. Preserve these events because they change the obtained arrangement without belonging in correct due-event delivery.

Review earlier functional forms

Document what happens after responses that met prior criteria or remain useful participation. Sudden extinction of an important communication or safe alternative needs qualified ethical and clinical review.

Protect ordinary access and current choice

Food, water, bathroom use, communication, mobility, prescribed care, rest, safety, and emergency help remain available. Check whether the selected activity is still wanted rather than treating its name as a permanent reinforcer.

Use this sequence to audit differential reinforcement during shaping

Version Priya's contingency, identify due events, classify each delivery, retain extras and missingness, verify choice and access, calculate integrity, repair drift, and review response data separately.

Build Priya's shaping reinforcement-integrity audit

Create one versioned shaping reinforcement-integrity audit for the maker-space parts-sorting review. Include Priya's priority, terminal response, current response, changing dimension, unit, natural cue, eligible opportunity, ordinary supports, first and later criteria, response values, reinforcement due and delivered, prompts, latency, correction, access, health, exposure, advancement, hold, rollback, stop, authority, effective dates, integrity, agreement, invalidity, missingness, withdrawal, direct experience, burden, generalization, maintenance, result, uncertainty, decision, correction, and review trigger. Store only decision-relevant information with role-limited access.

Validate Priya's shaping evidence

Reproduce Priya's 25 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 32 due-event states and 25/32 = 78.1%. Verify criterion version, response value, consequence due, delivery time, quality, magnitude, duration, choice, extra delivery, access outside teaching, partner, and missingness. Sample agreement on due-event detection and latency. Repair implementation before interpreting whether the shaping sequence affected responding.

Keep Priya's measures and experience separate

Measure opportunity coverage, response values, criterion attainment, reinforcement integrity, prompt exposure, access, generalization, and maintenance with their own units. Ask Priya separately about clarity, effort, comfort, usefulness, burden, and whether assessment should continue. Accurate implementation can coexist with poor fit. A valued outcome can also improve without evidence that shaping alone produced the change.

Work through Priya's example

Priya has 32 opportunities with a programmed consequence due after the active sorting approximation. Twenty-five receive the planned consequence within the timing tolerance. Two are late, one has a smaller duration, one uses a different activity, one is omitted, one is inaccessible when delivered, and one has missing delivery data. The categories total 32, and correct delivery integrity is 25/32, or 78.1%. Three extra deliveries outside due events remain separate; a delivery after a below-criterion response belongs in that extra-delivery record because no consequence was due under the active plan. Preserve every planned and valid unit, raw count, denominator, criterion version, response value, reinforcement event, prompt, latency, access state, integrity result, withdrawal, direct report, system failure, correction, and unresolved item. This fictional example demonstrates one assessment control. It offers no universal shaping sequence, step size, reinforcement rule, independence, mastery, generalization, diagnosis, trait, treatment effect, legal conclusion, coverage decision, payment promise, or outcome guarantee.

Address Priya's main assessment risk

Removing the omitted and missing events produces 25/30 and overstates implementation. Counting the three extras in the numerator creates 28/32 even though they had no due-event basis. A familiar activity may also cease to be wanted during the session. Review goal relevance, response and dimension definitions, opportunity quality, ordinary supports, access, health, effort, prompts, reinforcement, partner behavior, context, client experience, authority, and causal scope separately. A clean graph cannot repair an inaccessible, burdensome, unwanted, or ethically unsound arrangement.

Keep shaping concepts and authority clear for Priya

The ABAI Basic Principles page supplies broad higher-education context. The BACB Test Content Outline includes shaping, differential reinforcement, measurement, prompting, generalization, maintenance, and evaluation as examination content. The current BACB Ethics Code addresses competence, client involvement, consent and assent when applicable, medical needs, positive reinforcement, risk, data, documentation, and evaluation for covered people. These sources create no individualized shaping plan or practice authority for Priya.

Distinguish gradual-change procedures for Priya

Vollmer's gradual-change review distinguishes shaping changes to response requirements from fading changes to stimuli, chaining changes to task components, and schedule thinning changes to reinforcement schedules. It is a conceptual review. Use the distinction to describe what changes in Priya's plan, while the qualified clinician selects and evaluates an individual procedure.

Read the small shaping comparison cautiously for Priya

Shane and colleagues compared a specified vocal-shaping condition with a broad reasonable-attempt condition for three autistic preschoolers and reported faster mastery under shaping in that study. The small, older, narrow comparison supplies no universal response form, step size, progression rule, or expected result for Priya.

Keep criteria and follow-up visible for Priya

For Priya's shaping reinforcement-integrity audit, McDougale and colleagues provide a reporting caution from 157 skill-acquisition articles in selected behavior-analytic journals. In Priya's review, remember that 26% lacked a specific mastery-criterion method, 58% lacked maintenance probes, and 1% were unclear about maintenance. This descriptive evidence supports transparent criteria and follow-up; it identifies no single best shaping threshold.

Preserve treatment scope, AAC, assent, and access for Priya

The CASP public summary supplies high-level ABA behavioral-health-treatment scope for autistic people, with licensed detail outside this page. ASHA's AAC portal says AAC users should always have access to their communication tools or devices. Breaux and Smith provide assent-focused practice guidance in an evolving evidence base. Follow governing sources and preserve communication, health care, food, water, bathroom use, mobility, rest, relationships, safety, and emergency help for Priya.

Choose Priya's next bounded action

Priya asks staff to confirm the activity choice at the start of each block and to preserve unrestricted access to the maker-space break area. Record the qualified owner, supporting evidence, effective date, current criterion, ordinary supports, health and access state, implementation check, accessible explanation, disagreement route, and reassessment trigger. Preserve the original assessment when responses, criteria, people, systems, tasks, health, or priorities change. A new arrangement creates a dated version rather than an error in Priya's earlier performance.

Close Priya's shaping review

Review the shaping reinforcement-integrity audit with Priya, the qualified behavior analyst, relevant partners, access owners, and specialists named in the manifest. Confirm that each criterion and denominator is reproducible, response shaping stays separate from prompting, fading, chaining, and schedule changes, AAC and basic access remain protected, health and motor questions stay with qualified professionals, and conclusions remain bounded to the sampled response, task, people, and context. Keep this page draft and noindex until every required review is complete.

How to Audit Differential Reinforcement During Shaping