Association for Behavior Analysis International

Identifying, understanding, and teaching concepts are each key for high-quality behavior-analytic approaches to our clinical work, research, and instruction. Yet, we sometimes use conceptual terms without clearly identifying the boundary conditions of the concept. Failure to clearly define the concept can result in learners using the concept in ways that are unintended or incorrect, and can leave teachers wondering how to resolve the errors. In the current symposium, we start with an example of the first step of conceptual instruction: conducting a concept analysis. We demonstrate how concept analysis can be used within the context of research and clinical practice by analyzing the concept of "treatment integrity." We then expand on this example by discussing how the critical features identified during the concept analysis can be used to develop a set of stimuli to teach the concept, to provide opportunities for learners to practice, and to assess generative responding. We close with advice about how to respond to learner errors during the acquisition of the concept.

Audience members should have skills related to: (1) teaching a variety of learners, (2) instructional design in its foundational forms, (3) concepts like examples, non-examples, generalization, and generative learning.

An important dimension of instruction involves teaching conceptual behavior related to the broadly applicable generalizations of a content domain. In this presentation, after defining and exemplifying “concept” and conceptual behavior, I will outline the necessary components for teaching a concept in any domain. The first step is to conduct a concept analysis of the critical features that define a concept, and the features that vary from instance to instance of the concept. From this prescription we must develop a range of typical or “close-in” examples and “far-out” examples of the concept that illustrate both the critical and variable features, develop a minimum rational set of close-in non-examples of the concept, each of which is missing only one critical feature, and develop additional examples and non-examples that may be needed to produce the desired discriminations. Teaching a concept this way produces generative responding to examples and non-examples not presented during instruction. To assess learners’ generative responding, we must create another set of far-out examples and close-in non-examples from the concept-analysis prescription. Finally, after initially acquiring conceptual behavior, learners must practice with additional far-out examples and close-in non-examples. Once these components are created, a teacher is ready to develop an instructional sequence of tasks that include context-setting descriptions, rules, examples, and non-examples.

One strategy instructional designers use involves creating lean programs with the fewest components necessary to get fluent performance of the skill we wish to teach. When teaching more complex skills, where the antecedent stimuli may be physically dissimilar to one another, designers must ensure they have provided a enough stimuli to adequately establish simple generative responding. Concept analyses present designers with a blueprint for assembling a minimum rational set of divergent examples and close-in non-examples. However, designers often need to include additional teaching, practice, and testing stimuli to adequately establish conceptual behavior. The question is, which additional stimuli should the instructional designer include? This presentation will highlight how instructional designers can conduct error analyses to identify learner error patterns in response to your instructional program. Based on these patterns, three types of errors can occur when learning concepts: Overgeneralization, undergeneralization, and misconceptions. Each of these types of errors require a different prescription from the instructional designer. We will discuss how to identify these errors, generate additional stimuli informed by these errors, and revise the instructional programs.