Use the Following to Answer Questions

question 123

Multiple Choice

Use the following to answer questions :
Scenario II
A boy with autism sometimes engages in self-stimulatory behaviour such as waving his hands in front of his eyes while doing his homework.Curiously,he engages in this behaviour when his father is around but usually not when his mother is.An applied behaviour analyst working with the boy closely observes the interactions between the boy and his parents in an effort to determine why the self-stimulatory behaviour is occurring.She notes that,on the rare occasions when the boy engages in the problem behaviour in the presence of his mother,the mother simply ignores this behaviour.However,after the problem behaviour occurs a number of times in the presence of the father,the father often intervenes.While he does not provide attention to his son,he does remove the homework materials for a number of minutes,essentially giving the boy a break.This usually calms the boy and results in the cessation of the problem behaviour.The therapist notes that the amount of self-stimulatory behaviour before the father intervenes is quite unpredictable;sometimes the father intervenes after only one or two instances,and sometimes he waits until many instances occur in an effort to keep the boy on task with his homework as long as possible.
-(Scenario II) The applied behaviour analyst would conclude that the father's behaviour of allowing his son to take breaks from his homework is probably being maintained by:

• A)extinction.
• B)negative reinforcement.
• C)positive reinforcement.
• D)observational learning.