Using the ABC Recording

As you saw from the examples on the previous page, there are lots of ways that teachers and others can arrange the antecedents and consequences to change a behavior. This makes teaching and learning so exciting! In Pia’s case, it’s easy to see that she shouldn’t just have yogurt. She’s managing to get out of eating anything solid by vomiting on the staff. As difficult as it sounds, the staff should not allow Pia to get out of eating solid food (escape the task). The staff might have to put up with some vomit (wearing plastic rain gear) so that Pia can be reinforced when she eats solid food. In Stewart’s case, we’d need to take some data and see whether his cussing behavior goes up or down when he is reprimanded. He might like the attention of the reprimand (it’s cool to make the teacher lose his temper) or really hate getting that attention (it’s embarrassing when everyone looks at him). In either case, we’d need to examine the consequence to determine how to decrease the cussing. We’ll be talking much more about the ways to develop a behavior plan using techniques in Lesson 6.

Please take a look at the data collection sheet to aid in identifying the antecedents, behaviors, and consequences. Again, we’ll be revisiting ABC analysis more.

ABC Data Sheet Example

Name:	Date:	Time:
Antecedent	Behavior	Consequence
Interruption/Transition	Crying	Physically guide to comply
Access denied	Whining	Ignored problem behavior
Wants something	Screaming	Count and mand procedure
Sensory reinforcement is valuable	Flopping	Block access to reinforcement
Demand @ table	Grabbing	Deny acces to reinforcer and physically guide to comply with demand
Demand at NET	Bolting	Escape extinction
MO is unclear/Out of the blue	Biting	Other
Other:	Hitting	Duration:
	Kicking
	Other