The Effects of Describing Antecedent Stimuli and Performance Criteria in Task Analysis Instruction for Graphing

Abstract

Task analyses are ubiquitous to applied behavior analysis interventions, yet little is known about the factors that make them effective. Numerous task analyses have been published in behavior analytic journals for constructing single-subject design graphs; however, learner outcomes using these task analyses may fall short of what could be considered socially significant by educators and the behavior analytic community. To investigate ways to enhance task analysis instruction, graphing performance was compared between groups receiving either a task analysis that simply described the necessary responses or the same task analysis supplemented with descriptions of relevant antecedent stimuli and performance criteria, or the consequences of correctly performing each step. Participants using the supplemented task analysis demonstrated more accurate graphing behavior compared with those using the task analysis without these descriptions. Implications of enhancing task analysis effectiveness by linking instructions to the three-term contingency are discussed.