Separate Rule Following From Prompt and Model Control

To separate rule following from prompt and model control, map Dorian's spoken or written rule alongside demonstrations, gestures, visual cues, response prompts, proximity, repetitions, corrections, task features, and direct outcomes. Use safe, planned variation or ordinary probes while preserving access and support. Evidence may support rule, prompt, model, stimulus, direct-contingency, historical, or mixed control; one correct response cannot identify its source.

Inventory every antecedent event

Record the rule, model, gesture, visual cue, prompt, correction, proximity, material arrangement, and prior trial. Small partner actions can become reliable sources of control.

Vary conditions safely

Use naturally occurring differences or planned low-risk probes that preserve communication, health, safety, and useful supports. Avoid arranging failure simply to prove a source of control.

Retain sequence and latency

Store which event occurred first, its timing, the response start, completion, partner action, and direct outcome. A condition label alone hides overlap and delayed prompts.

Accept mixed control

Rules, models, task features, prompts, and direct consequences often work together. A useful plan can support that combination while reporting evidence accurately.

Use this sequence to separate control

Map Dorian's events, preserve access, choose safe comparisons, record sequence and latency, audit overlap, ask Dorian about fit, and connect the supported pattern to one change.

Build Dorian's rule-versus-prompt control matrix

Create one versioned rule-versus-prompt control matrix for the community kitchen closing routine. Include Dorian'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.

Add an event-order field showing whether the rule, model, gesture, task cue, or prompt occurred first. Timing often explains apparent disagreements between observers who used the same broad condition label.

Validate Dorian's rule evidence

Reproduce 24 opportunities and results of 5/8 rule-only, 8/8 rule plus model, 7/8 rule plus point, with six repetitions distributed across conditions. Verify order, history, task cues, access, prompts, partner proximity, direct outcomes, Dorian's preference, and phase boundaries.

Connect Dorian's evidence to a decision

Dorian's matrix determines whether the team needs a clearer rule, stable task cues, prompt fading, partner training, or no additional clinical work. The goal is a useful and acceptable closing routine, and ordinary supports can remain when independence adds little value.

Work through Dorian's example

Dorian completes 24 closing opportunities. In eight rule-only opportunities he completes the target sequence in 5/8. With the same rule plus a live model he completes 8/8. With the rule plus a pointing prompt he completes 7/8. Partner repetition occurs in six opportunities across conditions. The pattern supports strong added prompt or model effects and leaves rule contribution unresolved. 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 Dorian.

Address Dorian's main interpretation risk

Calling 8/8 rule following ignores the model. Removing familiar access supports to isolate control can create confusion or failure. A rule-only probe after extensive modeled practice still carries that history. Visual task completion also may follow material arrangement. 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 Dorian

For Dorian's rule-versus-prompt control matrix, 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 Dorian comply.

Use applied rule-following studies cautiously for Dorian

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 Dorian.

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

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 Dorian 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 Dorian

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 Dorian's behavior.

Preserve assent and communication access for Dorian

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

Choose Dorian's next bounded action

Dorian chooses a fixed visual sequence and asks staff to stop repeating the rule after he begins. The next phase tests partner timing rather than removing the visual support. 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 Dorian's prior performance.

Close Dorian's rule review

Review the rule-versus-prompt control matrix with Dorian, 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 Separate Rule Following From Prompt and Model Control