Compare a Stated Rule With the Operating Contingency

To compare a stated rule with the operating contingency, translate Greta's rule into testable conditions, response, and consequence. Independently measure actual opportunities, consequence conditionality, timing, probability, magnitude, quality, exceptions, competing outcomes, and feedback. Classify the rule as supported, incomplete, inaccurate, changing, or unverifiable for the sampled period. Correspondence evidence does not prove which history controlled Greta's response.

Translate wording into variables

Identify the rule's antecedent condition, action, promised or threatened outcome, time window, probability language, magnitude, quality, and exceptions. Preserve ambiguity as a field.

Measure response and nonresponse states

Record outcomes after the named action and relevant alternatives. Use a complete contingency table so favorable cases cannot define their own denominator.

Audit timing and observability

The outcome must occur within the stated window and be observable to Greta if correspondence history is part of the question. Record delayed, partial, hidden, and corrected outcomes.

Separate accuracy from control

A rule can accurately describe a contingency without controlling Greta's response, and an inaccurate rule can influence responding. Report correspondence and source-of-control evidence separately.

Use this sequence to compare rule and contingency

Version the rule, define variables, collect all eligible states, calculate conditional outcomes, inspect exceptions, classify correspondence, correct communication, and limit inference.

Build Greta's rule-contingency correspondence audit

Create one versioned rule-contingency correspondence audit for the community media submission desk. Include Greta'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.

Retain every eligible outcome long enough to reach the rule's stated time window. Early extracts can misclassify pending reviews as failures and make an accurate rule appear weaker than it is. Preserve the extraction date and maturity rule.

Validate Greta's rule evidence

Reproduce 30 submissions, 22 timely, 18 timely with same-day review, eight late, five late with same-day review, 81.8%, 62.5%, and the 19.3-point difference. Verify eligibility, timing, exceptions, editor, workload, consequence quality, feedback, and correction history.

Connect Greta's evidence to a decision

Greta's audit can support a revised public rule, an operations repair, more precise exceptions, or a prospective review. It cannot determine clinical rule control by itself. The desk owner handles operations, while the qualified clinician interprets any clinical question within scope.

Work through Greta's example

The desk says submissions before 3 p.m. receive same-day review. Across 30 eligible submissions, 22 arrive before 3 and 18 receive same-day review. Eight arrive later and five also receive same-day review. Conditional review is 18/22, or 81.8%, versus 5/8, or 62.5%, a 19.3-point descriptive difference. The rule overstates separation in this sample. 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 Greta.

Address Greta's main interpretation risk

Reporting 18 same-day reviews after timely submission omits the five reviews after late submission. Treating the 19.3-point difference as causal ignores workload, editor, topic, queue priority, and exceptions. Treating the stated deadline as the actual contingency bypasses measurement. 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 Greta

For Greta's rule-contingency correspondence audit, 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 Greta comply.

Use applied rule-following studies cautiously for Greta

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 Greta.

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

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 Greta 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 Greta

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 Greta's behavior.

Preserve assent and communication access for Greta

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 Greta an accessible way to ask, correct, disagree, accept, pause, decline, or withdraw, and respond under governing consent, assent, safety, and legal sources.

Choose Greta's next bounded action

Greta asks the desk to state that the deadline increases the chance of same-day review and to list priority exceptions. The next month retains editor and queue fields. 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 Greta's prior performance.

Close Greta's rule review

Review the rule-contingency correspondence audit with Greta, 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 Compare a Stated Rule With the Operating Contingency