Test Whether a Demonstration Controls a New Response

To test whether a demonstration controls a new response, define the act that is new within Otis's tested arrangement, present a usable demonstration, and compare safe opportunities in which the demonstration, task product, and response prompts vary as planned. Keep instructions, prior chains, direct outcomes, and correction histories visible. Similar responding after a model supports model control only within the tested sequence and comparison.

Define new within the arrangement

Document whether Otis has performed, practiced, seen, or received instructions for each act. New means untrained at the relevant model-response level in this assessment, rather than new to the universe.

Map every available cue

Record demonstrations, words, pictures, gestures, product states, material affordances, partner location, sequence position, corrections, and outcomes. These events can jointly influence responding.

Choose low-burden contrasts

Use comparable action sets and ordinary supports. Vary one meaningful source when practical, balance order, watch for learning across trials, and avoid withholding safety or communication support.

Interpret the sequence cautiously

A higher response rate after demonstrations supports a bounded model-control hypothesis. It does not prove a single cause, generalized imitation, or future performance with another model or task.

Use this sequence to test demonstration control

Establish Otis's decision, document novelty, map cues, select safe contrasts, preserve trial order, record matching dimensions, ask Otis about fit, and stop when the evidence supports an action.

Build Otis's demonstration-control probe

Create one versioned demonstration-control probe for the community makerspace assembly. Include Otis's priority, model and response definitions, relevant matching dimensions, equivalent forms, trained or novel status, opportunity and clock rules, access, prompts, rules, task cues, direct outcomes, observed model outcomes, context, history, client experience, choice, invalidity, missingness, withdrawal, alternative control, evidence limits, qualified owner, correction, and reassessment trigger. Store only decision-relevant information with role-limited access.

Validate Otis's evidence

Reproduce 24 opportunities, three sets of eight, 6/8 demonstration-only, 2/8 product-only, and 7/8 demonstration plus point. Verify matched action sets, novelty evidence, access, instructions, product cues, prompts, consequences, order, carryover, refusal, and limits on inference.

Connect Otis's evidence to a decision

Otis's probe can support continued demonstrations, a prompt-fading assessment, clearer product cues, or direct teaching. The qualified clinician should stop once the practical teaching decision is resolved, especially when additional contrasts would add burden without changing action.

Work through Otis's example

Otis receives 24 assembly opportunities across matched action sets. He completes the new step in 6/8 demonstration-only opportunities, 2/8 product-only opportunities, and 7/8 opportunities with a demonstration plus a pointing prompt. The contrast supports a model-control hypothesis. The last condition remains mixed because the gesture may contribute. Preserve every planned and valid opportunity, model version, accessible presentation, response, equivalent, prompt, rule, task cue, consequence, timing, access and health state, withdrawal, invalid event, correction, and unresolved item. This fictional example demonstrates one assessment control. It supplies no diagnosis, universal imitation hierarchy, treatment effect, legal conclusion, coverage decision, payment promise, or outcome guarantee for Otis.

Address Otis's main interpretation risk

Calling every post-demonstration response imitation ignores spoken rules, visible product features, partner gestures, and prior assembly routines. Calling 7/8 stronger proof than 6/8 also ignores the added prompt and small samples. Removing useful supports solely to create a clean test can harm participation. Review model access, matching criteria, motor and sensory demands, communication, prompts, rules, task products, direct outcomes, prior learning, context, health, fatigue, preference, direct experience, and design strength separately. A convincing sequence cannot make an unsafe, inaccessible, unwanted, unauthorized, or irrelevant imitation goal clinically appropriate.

Keep scope and authority clear for Otis

For Otis's demonstration-control probe, 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 imitation assessment, motor diagnosis, legal authority, or requirement that Otis copy another person.

Use generalized-imitation studies narrowly for Otis

Young and colleagues studied four children with autism using reinforced training and nonreinforced probes across vocal, toy-play, and pantomime response types. Imitation generalized within trained response types and did not generalize across types in that experiment. A three-participant facial-model study reported generalization to unreinforced facial probes for two participants and inconsistent probe responding for one. These small studies show why Otis's trained examples, probe history, response classes, and consequences must remain visible. They supply no universal probe ratio, mastery criterion, or prognosis.

Separate monitoring and later learning for Otis

Taylor, DeQuinzio, and Stine evaluated three children with autism in a sight-word arrangement. Test performance was more accurate when the study required monitoring responses related to a peer's response than when participants only encountered the peer's response. The authors described the analysis as preliminary. The result motivates measuring accessible monitoring and later performance separately for Otis; it does not establish a universal component sequence or prove learning from another person's consequence in every context.

Expect model and format effects to vary for Otis

Marcus and Wilder compared peer and self video models while teaching textual responses, and later conversation performance differed by child. An older peer-model study involved four children and five discrimination tasks; correct responding increased after peer modeling in that specific design. These studies support documenting model, task, media, and person-level results. They do not establish that a peer, self, live, or video model is generally superior for Otis.

Preserve assent and communication access for Otis

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 Otis an accessible way to ask, correct, accept, pause, decline, or withdraw. Do not require eye contact, speech, copying, or removal of communication access as the price of participation.

Choose Otis's next bounded action

Otis chooses the short demonstration plus an optional still image. The makerspace keeps the pointing prompt available for safety-critical alignment while measuring it separately. Record the qualified owner, source evidence, effective date, current model and task version, ordinary supports, access and health state, implementation check, accessible explanation, disagreement route, and reassessment trigger. Preserve the earlier record when models, responses, settings, systems, equipment, consequences, health, or priorities change. A repaired arrangement creates a dated phase rather than an error in Otis's prior performance.

Close Otis's assessment

Review the demonstration-control probe with Otis, the qualified behavior analyst, relevant partners, access owners, and specialists named in the manifest. Confirm that model exposure, accessible monitoring, immediate matching, later performance, observed-consequence learning, generalization, prompt or rule control, direct outcomes, 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 Test Whether a Demonstration Controls a New Response