Overview of the Applications Section
The Applications section is the largest portion of the BCBA exam at approximately 36% of all questions. This section tests your knowledge of how to assess behavior, design and implement interventions, and evaluate outcomes. It covers both skill acquisition and behavior reduction procedures.
Key Topics
Behavioral Assessment
Effective ABA practice begins with thorough assessment. You must understand indirect assessment methods (interviews, rating scales, questionnaires), descriptive assessment (ABC recording, scatterplot analysis), and functional analysis procedures (alone, attention, demand, tangible, control conditions). Understanding the advantages, limitations, and appropriate use of each method is critical.
Skill Acquisition Procedures
This area covers how to teach new behaviors effectively. Key procedures include discrete trial training (DTT), naturalistic teaching strategies, task analysis and chaining (forward, backward, total task), shaping, prompting hierarchies (most-to-least, least-to-most), prompt fading, and stimulus fading. You must also understand how to use differential reinforcement to build new repertoires.
Behavior Reduction Procedures
Reducing problem behavior requires function-based interventions. Key concepts include differential reinforcement procedures (DRA, DRI, DRO, DRL, DRH), antecedent-based interventions (NCR, environmental modifications, motivating operation manipulations), extinction procedures (and their potential side effects), and the use of punishment only when reinforcement-based procedures have been exhausted.
Generalization and Maintenance
Programming for generalization and maintenance ensures that behavior changes last beyond the training context. Strategies include training sufficient exemplars, programming common stimuli, using intermittent reinforcement schedules, training loosely, and incorporating natural reinforcers. These concepts appear frequently on the exam.
Study Strategy
Since Applications accounts for over a third of the exam, dedicate the most study time to this section. Practice with scenario-based questions that present a client situation and ask you to select the most appropriate intervention. Focus on function-based decision-making: always identify the function of behavior before selecting an intervention.