Applied Behavioral Analysis

Applied Behavioral Analysis guides you to :

  • examine a particular behavior
  • discover recurrent patterns
  • deduce from those observations what rules or laws govern these actions.
This theory involves a multiple step process for looking at the actual problem, examining the way people behave or act, and separating the behavior into parts to learn about their nature, proportion and relationship.
This analysis carries the acronym ABC.
  • ‘A’ stands for the antecedent of a behavior or what happened before the behavior occurred.
  • ‘B’ stands for the behavior.
  • ‘C’ is for the consequences of the behavior, its results, outcomes or effects.
These are the parts of the whole that we analyze to help us draw conclusions about why the unhealthful behavior is maintained.
Three laws or rules of behavior have been identified:
  1. People are more likely to do next time the thing that worked this time, in other words, the thing that got them what they wanted this time. (reinforcement)
  2. People are less likely to repeat a behavior if the outcome of what was done this time was unpleasant. (punishment)
  3. People are likely to stop performing a behavior altogether if it doesn’t result in any reaction at all (extinguished behavior).

How has it been applied? We find these rules of behavior in all humans. Applied Behavioral Analysis allows us to deconstruct behaviors to help people act, react and interact in ways that will bring more desirable outcomes. The model as been applied in myriad projects surrounding the health and education of both adults and children.

Example: The initiative to prevent bacterial infection from chitterlings, one of the four examples fully described on this disk, took into account Applied Behavioral Analysis.