ABA Exam Coach

Free diagnostic

40 questions

1. A 9-year-old often refuses math worksheets. His teacher starts letting him put the worksheet away and take a 3-minute break each time he finishes three problems. Over two weeks, the number of problems he completes each session increases steadily. Which procedure best describes this?
2. Why do single-case experimental designs rely on repeated measurement of the target behavior within each condition?
3. After a supervision meeting, a trainee from a different cultural background tells her BCBA supervisor that a passing comment about the trainee's accent felt hurtful. Which response best shows cultural humility?
4. An occupational therapist on a client's team recommends a weighted vest to reduce the client's off-task behavior. The BCBA knows the research support for this practice is limited. What is the most appropriate response?
5. An OBM consultant at a distribution warehouse spends two weeks recording the steps employees perform when packing orders. She notes how long each step takes and sorts the steps into categories. She does not change any procedures or relate the steps to other variables. What level of scientific understanding does this work represent?
6. An OBM consultant tracks packing errors at a warehouse. In Week 1, a team packs 1,200 orders in 40 hours and makes 18 errors. In Week 2, after a new checklist is introduced, the team packs 2,400 orders in 40 hours and makes 24 errors. Which conclusion is most accurate?
7. During a language assessment, a 4-year-old reliably says 'juice' when shown a cup of juice and asked 'What is it?' When he is thirsty and no juice is in sight, he cries but does not say 'juice.' When asked 'What do you drink at breakfast?' he does not respond. How should the BCBA interpret this?
8. A BCBA is moving to another state in 3 months and will no longer be able to serve her current clients. What is the most appropriate course of action?
9. A learner meets the mastery criterion for labeling 10 common objects using the therapist's teaching cards. On probes with different pictures and with real objects at home, she labels only 3 of 10 correctly. What modification is most appropriate?
10. A school-based BCBA reviews office discipline referrals. Black students are referred far more often than other students for "disrespect" and "defiance." Referrals for clearly observable behaviors, such as fighting, are proportional across groups. What is the best interpretation and next step?
11. An FT 15-s schedule of attention has reduced a 12-year-old's attention-maintained self-injury (SIB) to near zero across 5 sessions. The goal is a schedule that teachers can manage in a general education classroom. Which thinning plan is best?
12. Two 2nd graders raise their hands in exactly the same way. A functional assessment shows that Nora's hand raising reliably produces help from the teacher. Eli raises his hand mostly after sitting for a long time, and it eases stiffness in his shoulder whether or not the teacher responds. Which statement is most accurate?
13. In a preschool, Ava watches a classmate raise his hand and receive a sticker, and watches another child call out and get ignored. The next day, in a different activity, Ava raises her hand and does not call out. Which term best describes Ava's behavior change?
14. A 10-year-old learns to ride a skateboard at a local park. No one gives him instructions. Over many attempts, his weight shifts that keep him upright let him keep riding, and poor shifts lead to falls. His balance steadily improves. His balancing is best described as:
15. After an assessment, a BCBA writes supervision goals for a new RBT. Which goal is written MOST appropriately?
16. In a reversal design, self-injury drops from about 40 to about 32 instances per hour during each intervention phase and returns to baseline levels during reversal. The functional relation is clear. However, the client still has frequent tissue damage, and caregivers report no meaningful improvement in daily life. Which dimension of ABA is this intervention most clearly failing to meet?
17. After observing a session, a BCBA tells an RBT, 'You need to be more on top of things.' The RBT looks confused and gets defensive. Which change would MOST improve this feedback?
18. A BCBA records 100 ten-second intervals in a classroom. A teacher demand occurs in 50 intervals. Aggression occurs in 25 intervals, and 20 of those are intervals that also contain a demand. What is the conditional probability of aggression given a demand?
19. A BCBA is starting services for a middle-school student who already has a long special-education history. Which record would most directly show which behavioral interventions have already been tried and how well they worked?
20. A 14-year-old picks at the skin on his arms during high school lectures. Assessment suggests the behavior is maintained by automatic reinforcement. Which alternative behavior is most socially valid to establish?
21. A distribution center manager announces that each warehouse employee who completes the safety checklist on every shift this month will get a $50 bonus. Each employee's bonus depends only on his or her own checklists. Which type of group contingency is this?
22. A research team video-records a 20-minute session of a child's vocal stereotypy and scores it four ways. Continuous duration recording shows stereotypy for 40% of the session. Partial-interval recording shows 70%, whole-interval recording shows 15%, and momentary time sampling shows 38%. Which statement best explains these results?
23. An RBT times a client's vocal outbursts. Outburst 1 lasts from 0:10 to 0:20, outburst 2 from 0:50 to 1:00, and outburst 3 from 2:00 to 2:10 (minutes:seconds). Measuring interresponse time from the end of one response to the start of the next, what is the mean IRT?
24. A teacher gives a student token boards that require 3, 6, or 9 tokens before exchange, varying the board across sessions. For each session she records how many seconds pass between the work instruction and the student starting the first task. What is the dependent variable?
25. In a multiple-baseline-across-settings design targeting a 5-year-old's hand-raising, the intervention starts in reading group. Hand-raising rises in reading group but stays at baseline levels in math and science, where the intervention has not started. In baseline logic, the unchanged data in math and science, collected after intervention began in reading group, mainly provide:
26. A BCBA is setting up a preference assessment for a child from a family that recently immigrated. Which step best builds cultural variables into this assessment?
27. A BCBA at an outpatient clinic was certified three years ago and wants to keep her clinical skills current. Which activity best shows her actively maintaining competence?
28. A BCBA often arrives 15 minutes late to supervision meetings and checks her phone while her supervisee presents cases. What is the MOST likely effect on the supervisory relationship?
29. A feeding team is worried that a client eats so fast he is at risk of choking. The goal is to increase the pause between bites. Which measurement should the BCBA use?
30. On a hot afternoon at the park, a 5-year-old sees an ice cream truck parked nearby, and his father asks, "What do you want?" The child says "Ice cream!" The heat, the sight of the truck, and the father's question each add strength to the single response "ice cream." This is best described as:
31. A 17-year-old in a vocational training program eats lunch so quickly that he has gagged several times. Staff want him to keep eating but at a slower pace. They praise him and give a point toward a preferred activity for each bite taken at least 15 seconds after the previous bite. Bites taken sooner earn nothing. Which procedure are staff using?
32. A general education teacher says she won't carry out a student's behavior plan because it 'takes too much time.' What is the BCBA's most appropriate first step?
33. RBTs often skip a required 2-minute data-graphing step at the end of each session. A performance diagnostic shows they know the step, but the agency praises and tracks 'sessions ending on time,' and graphing often makes sessions run late. Which intervention BEST addresses the function of this performance problem?
34. A BCBA measures the total duration of a teenager's on-task behavior during a 30-minute study period at home. The goal is for him to work in longer stretches with fewer breaks. On Monday and Thursday the totals are both 20 minutes. Video shows that on Monday he worked in one continuous stretch, while on Thursday he worked in ten short bouts. What should the BCBA conclude about the measurement system?
35. A client reliably completes vocational tasks with reinforcement after every task (CRF). The team wants the skill to persist when reinforcement becomes less frequent at a community job. What is the best next step?
36. A school-based BCBA is asked to assess a 9-year-old who tears up papers and leaves the room during reading lessons but rarely during other subjects. Which records would best help the BCBA judge whether a reading skill deficit is part of the problem?
37. Ella asks for juice much more often on hot days after recess. She asks only when her aide, who keeps the juice, is nearby. Which analysis correctly identifies the variables?
38. In an adult group home, residents earn tokens that can be exchanged for snacks, community outings, music time, or spending money. Staff notice that the tokens stay effective all day, even right after lunch when residents are full. What best explains why the tokens resist this kind of satiation?
39. A BCBA teaches a 25-year-old adult with intellectual disability to cross the street only when the "walking person" signal is lit. Which probe result provides the strongest evidence that stimulus discrimination has been established?
40. A BCBA has worked with a 9-year-old client in his school for a year. Midyear, the BCBA's spouse is hired as the teacher in the client's classroom. No other BCBA at her agency can take the case right now. What is the most appropriate course of action?