Design an Accessible Simple-Discrimination Assessment

To design an accessible simple discrimination assessment, define one response and consequence across an SD condition where that consequence has been more available and a relevant comparison condition where it has been less available. Verify Dalia's sensory, motor, language, AAC, and symbol access. Match opportunity, effort, prompts, and irrelevant features. Report differential responding with a denominator for each condition and clear contextual limits.

Define the response and consequence

Specify Dalia's accessible response forms, eligible opportunity, response window, prompts, correction, and the consequence whose availability differs. Describe the ordinary decision and why discrimination matters.

Define SD and comparison conditions

State the relevant antecedent features and consequence history for each condition. Use functional labels only for a defined response and consequence. A color or word is never an SD in every context.

Verify access before performance

Check that Dalia can detect, distinguish, and understand the materials and perform the response. Preserve AAC, assistive technology, mobility, interpreters, and ordinary supports. Route hearing, vision, motor, or language questions appropriately.

Match the opportunities

Balance position, timing, staff behavior, materials, response effort, prompting, and exposure. Record natural differences that cannot be matched and limit the conclusion accordingly.

Report both conditions

Show responses divided by eligible SD opportunities and comparison opportunities, plus latency, prompts, invalid trials, consequence delivery, and direct experience. One high SD percentage without the comparison leaves control unresolved.

Use this sequence to design an accessible simple discrimination assessment

Define Dalia's response and consequence, build SD and comparison opportunities, verify access, balance irrelevant features, predeclare invalidity and stop rules, measure both conditions, and interpret only the sampled relation.

Build Dalia's simple-discrimination assessment protocol

Create one versioned simple-discrimination assessment protocol for the community-transit information review. Include Dalia's priority, response, opportunity, antecedent feature, compound, comparison, consequence history, setting, partner, effort, prompts, feedback, order, exposure, access, health, motivation, integrity, agreement, raw data, invalidity, missingness, withdrawal, direct experience, result, uncertainty, decision, owner, correction, and review trigger. Store only decision-relevant information with role-limited access.

Validate Dalia's stimulus-control evidence

A qualified reviewer should confirm that Dalia's SD and comparison conditions differ on the intended consequence history and keep other assessment features sufficiently comparable. Test visual, auditory, language, AAC, motor, and timing access before scoring. Reproduce each condition denominator, invalidity reason, and consequence-delivery check. Dalia reviews whether the response and display reflect the real transit decision. A new stop, route, or display version requires its own evidence.

Keep Dalia's response and experience separate

Measure the defined response under eligible target and comparison opportunities, and ask Dalia separately about clarity, effort, comfort, usefulness, burden, and whether the assessment should continue. Differential responding can coexist with inaccessible materials or an unwanted goal. Enjoyment or confidence can also change without evidence of the tested stimulus relation. Report both evidence streams with their own units, timing, and decision role.

Work through Dalia's example

Dalia receives 20 boarding-display and 20 arriving-display opportunities with matched position, staff location, and response effort. She selects the boarding route in 16/20 boarding conditions and 4/20 arriving conditions. Two additional opportunities are invalid after the audio display fails and remain in planned coverage only. The 16/20 versus 4/20 difference supports stimulus discrimination in the sampled transit setup without isolating every display feature. Preserve every planned and valid unit, raw count, denominator, feature state, comparison, prompt, access condition, integrity result, withdrawal, direct report, system failure, correction, and unresolved item. This fictional example demonstrates one assessment control. It offers no universal stimulus function, diagnosis, ability, treatment effect, legal conclusion, coverage decision, payment promise, or outcome guarantee.

Address Dalia's main assessment risk

If boarding and arriving displays differ in volume, location, or staff movement, Dalia's differential responding may reflect those features. Accessible comparison design gives the result a defensible unit. Review response definition, feature access, comparison, consequence history, motivation, prompts, position, order, effort, health, setting, partner, exposure, integrity, client experience, authority, and causal scope separately. High accuracy never repairs a confounded or inaccessible assessment.

Keep stimulus-control concepts and authority clear for Dalia

The ABAI Basic Principles page lists stimulus control in higher-education content. The BACB Test Content Outline covers stimulus control, simple and conditional discrimination, prompting and fading, generalization, and related concepts as examination content. The current BACB Ethics Code addresses competence, involvement, consent and assent when applicable, assessment, risk, data, documentation, and evaluation for covered people. For Dalia, these sources do not create licensure, payer approval, or an individualized protocol.

Anchor Dalia's interpretation in comparison and history

Lattal's contingency review supports careful analysis of response-consequence relations beyond close timing. Saini and colleagues reviewed 31 applied multiple-schedule studies and described uses of correlated signals across applications. These sources illustrate history and differential responding. They do not establish that one color, card, display, schedule, or procedure will control Dalia's response or improve a clinical outcome.

Plan generalization explicitly for Dalia

Stokes and Baer organized nine historically influential generalization tactics. Osnes and Lieblein analyze generalization through stimulus control and relevant environmental features. For Dalia, define the intended performance universe, trained set, reserved probes, common stimuli, natural supports, and context-specific results. Historical frameworks guide questions rather than supply a universal modern protocol.

Read gradient evidence narrowly for Dalia

Lalli and colleagues systematically varied therapist distance in one applied assessment and observed different response levels. The study illustrates an ordered stimulus dimension and a case-specific gradient. It does not prescribe exposing Dalia to distress, identify a diagnosis, or predict another gradient. The CASP public summary supplies high-level ABA treatment scope for autistic people, with licensed detail outside this page.

Preserve AAC, assent, and basic access for Dalia

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. For Dalia, follow governing consent and assent sources, honor accessible refusal and withdrawal, and keep adequate food and water, bathroom access, communication, mobility, prescribed care, pain response, rest, safety, relationships, and emergency help available.

Choose Dalia's next bounded action

Dalia asks to keep the audio and text display together and chooses a second transit stop for a later probe. Record the qualified owner, evidence, effective date, current supports, access and safety state, implementation check, accessible explanation, disagreement route, and reassessment trigger. Preserve the original assessment when materials or contexts change. A new cue version creates a dated record rather than an error in Dalia's earlier performance.

Close Dalia's stimulus-control review

Review the simple-discrimination assessment protocol with Dalia, the qualified behavior analyst, relevant partners, access owners, and specialists named in the manifest. Confirm that stimulus presentation stays separate from functional control, target and comparison denominators are reproducible, AAC and basic access remain protected, health and sensory questions stay with qualified professionals, and conclusions remain bounded to the tested response and context. Keep this page draft and noindex until every required review is complete.

How to Design an Accessible Simple-Discrimination Assessment