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TZ905: Concepts and Principles of Applied Behaviour Analysis Review of the Literature This assignment requires you to conduct a review of the literature

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TZ905: Concepts and Principles of Applied Behaviour Analysis

Review of the Literature

This assignment requires you to conduct a review of the literature. You should pay close attention to the following guidance.

A constructional approach to challenging behaviour (Goldiamond, 1974; LaVigna & Donnellan,

1986) emphasises the importance of developing skills and behavioural repertoires rather than focusing directly on eliminating behaviours that challenge. Focusing on adding behaviours to a person’s repertoire in this way often results in a reduction in behaviours that challenge.

For this review, you are required to focus on the application of basic concepts of behaviour analysis to our understanding of the development of behaviour, and the mechanisms by which this might result in a reduction in behaviours that challenge. In particular, you should consider how this process is influenced by the concepts of a) motivating operations, b) discriminative stimuli, c) reinforcement

(including schedules), d) extinction, and e) punishment.

This assignment has several purposes:

• It requires students to browse the scientific/theoretical literature in order to find relevant articles/texts;

• It requires students to ‘read around’ the topic;

• It provides opportunities for students to think about how their practice (measurement procedures, experimental designs, interventions) can be informed by work already done;

• It requires students to present a summary of what has been done and what has been found in relation to the topic;

• It provides the opportunity to practice the skills involved in summarising complex

scientific/academic material succinctly.

Structure

Your assignment should begin with a very brief overview of the constructional approach. It is then expected that you will briefly describe each of the basic concepts of behaviour analysis in turn. You should then present a diagram or table that visually represents how all of these concepts link back to the development of skills and potential reduction in behaviours that challenge. A detailed literature review should then follow, whereby you discuss the elements of your diagram/table with reference to relevant published literature. Finally, you should summarise and draw these points together in a concluding section.

Content

The review can consist entirely of experimental articles or a combination of experimental and

theoretical material (articles or material from books) with the balance in favour of experimental

articles. If the review consists solely of theoretical material, it will be marked as a fail.

Including secondary sources in the review is not good practice. Secondary sources are textbooks such

as the essential course texts and other textbooks like them. Those (secondary) sources might be useful

as starting points in the search for information and material on a chosen topic, but they should not

then be included as authoritative sources in a literature review. The literature review should consist

entirely of original material.

The review should consider a minimum of five relevant articles (including theoretical texts that might

be single-authored books or chapters in edited books). More than five articles is encouraged and the

extra effort will likely be reflected in the marks awarded.

Word count

The review should not be less than 2,500 and should not be more than 3,000 words.