Short breakdowns of the specific misconceptions that trip up well-prepared BCBA candidates — and how to catch yourself before you fall for them on exam day.
Both involve time. Both can deliver the same reinforcer. One question separates FT from FI — and it's not the clock.
Only 43% of candidates get this one right, and only 30% get this one. Both test the same skill: telling behaviorism, EAB, ABA, and professional practice apart by what the activity is for, not what it looks like.
Both MOs and SDs can occur right before behavior and make responding go up — which is exactly why "the response increased when X appeared" isn't enough. Here's the value-vs-availability distinction that actually separates them.
Burst, variability, resurgence, spontaneous recovery — all four can follow extinction, and they're not the same thing. Here's how to reconstruct the contingency history instead of reaching for the first familiar word.
Every option is real, defensible, and backed by evidence — and three of them are still wrong. Here's how to weigh function, safety, history, and feasibility at once instead of freezing.
Every option in this classic trap describes a real ABA procedure. Only one actually matches the function the assessment confirmed — and catching the difference is the whole skill being tested.
Radical and methodological behaviorism both accept that private events are real. That's exactly what makes them so easy to confuse — and why one careful-sounding requirement gives the wrong answer away.
You've probably missed this question before — not because you didn't know the four scientific goals, but because your brain reached for the answer that sounded more sophisticated instead of the one the evidence actually supported.