To reassess rule governed behavior after context or access changes, review Ines's rule version, speaker, setting, language, AAC, sensory and motor access, timing, task, audience, authority, social consequences, direct outcomes, health, stress, preference, and exposure history. Repair changed conditions and preserve the earlier phase. Collect only the follow-up evidence needed for a practical decision, then update or close the hypothesis.
Compare context components
Map people, setting, wording, channel, language, AAC, task, materials, timing, authority, social reactions, direct outcomes, and prior exposure rather than treating context as a place label.
Join conditions at the event level
Attach each access, health, prompt, speaker, and consequence state to its opportunity. Overlapping conditions remain visible without inflating denominators.
Repair system changes first
Restore chosen communication, usable cues, materials, equipment, partner response, and necessary health support. Begin a new phase after meaningful repair.
Ask Ines what changed
Direct report can identify confusing wording, effort, preference, social pressure, or valued outcomes that records miss. Preserve disagreement among evidence sources.
Use this sequence to reassess context and access
Version the contexts, join event evidence, repair access, route health needs, ask Ines, compare valid phases, state alternatives, and choose the smallest useful next action.
Build Ines's context-and-access rule reassessment
Create one versioned context-and-access rule reassessment for the community ceramics studio. Include Ines'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.
Use one event identifier across the rule, access, partner, health, and outcome tables. That key preserves overlaps and lets a second reviewer reproduce every context-specific denominator without guessing which records refer to the same opportunity. Keep correction dates beside that identifier.
Validate Ines's rule evidence
Reproduce 15/18 original, 7/18 second-studio, five unfamiliar-icon events, four timer-access failures with two overlapping, and 10/12 after repair. Confirm that 5 + 4 - 2 equals seven uniquely affected second-studio opportunities. Do not derive a valid-access response denominator until the event-level record identifies which affected opportunities were invalid, still eligible, prompted, or otherwise classified. Verify event-level joins, rule and context versions, speakers, language, AAC, health, stress, outcomes, social response, and Ines's experience.
Connect Ines's evidence to a decision
Ines's review assigns icon and equipment repair before any clinical change. The qualified clinician then decides whether differences in speaker, social consequences, direct outcomes, or context warrant more evidence. A stable support can remain if Ines finds it useful.
Work through Ines's example
Ines follows a glaze-cleanup rule in 15/18 original-studio opportunities. At a second studio she completes the sequence in 7/18, but five opportunities use an unfamiliar icon set and four have no reachable rinse timer, with overlap in two. The affected-opportunity count is seven, calculated as 5 + 4 - 2. Event-level classification is still required before treating any affected opportunity as valid or invalid performance. After icons and timer access are repaired, she completes 10/12 valid opportunities. Event-level records prevent double counting. 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 Ines.
Address Ines's main interpretation risk
Calling 7/18 loss of rule control places unfamiliar cues and inaccessible equipment inside Ines. Adding five plus four produces nine affected trials even though two overlap. Merging the repaired 10/12 with the earlier context removes the change the reassessment needs to evaluate. 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 Ines
For Ines's context-and-access rule reassessment, 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 Ines comply.
Use applied rule-following studies cautiously for Ines
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 Ines.
Treat rule-based insensitivity as a bounded research claim for Ines
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 Ines 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 Ines
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 Ines's behavior.
Preserve assent and communication access for Ines
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 Ines an accessible way to ask, correct, disagree, accept, pause, decline, or withdraw, and respond under governing consent, assent, safety, and legal sources.
Choose Ines's next bounded action
Ines asks both studios to use the same chosen icons and a reachable timer. The record keeps studio, rule source, access, and partner acknowledgment as separate 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 Ines's prior performance.
Close Ines's rule review
Review the context-and-access rule reassessment with Ines, 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.
Related resources
- How to Document Rule-Governed Behavior Evidence and Limits
- How to Assess Adaptation After a Rule or Contingency Changes
- How to Define a Rule-Governed Behavior Assessment Question
- How to Compare a Stated Rule With the Operating Contingency
Sources
- Council of Autism Service Providers, ABA Practice Guidelines Version 3.0 public summary
- Behavior Analyst Certification Board, Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts
- Behavior Analyst Certification Board, BCBA Test Content Outline, 6th edition
- Tarbox and colleagues, Rule-Governed Behavior: Teaching a Preliminary Repertoire of Rule-Following to Children With Autism
- Teaching Children With Autism to Follow Rules Specifying a Behavior and Consequence
- Kissi and colleagues, The Rule-Based Insensitivity Effect: A Systematic Review
- The Study of Rule-Governed Behavior and Derived Stimulus Relations: Bridging the Gap
- Galizio, Contingency-Shaped and Rule-Governed Behavior: Instructional Control of Human Loss Avoidance
- Breaux and Smith, Assent in Applied Behaviour Analysis and Positive Behaviour Support
- American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Augmentative and Alternative Communication