RBT exam · flashcards

ABA terms for the RBT exam

By Ash Ranger · November 14, 2026

Applied behavior analysis has a word for most of what a technician does in a session. The RBT exam is written around those tasks, so you need each word well enough to spot it with a client in front of you, not just recite it. Here are 69 of them, each in one plain sentence, sorted into the exam’s six content areas.

Each term links to the five-minute lesson that teaches it. The terms come from the BACB’s RBT Test Content Outline and RBT Ethics Code. The meanings come from our lessons, which cite their sources: the NCAEP evidence-based practices report for differential reinforcement and prompting, for example, and OpenStax Psychology 2e for reinforcement.

Words that come in pairs

Many of these words have a near twin, and our hardest questions turn on the difference. We counted the questions in our 300-question RBT practice bank that offer both words of a pair as answer choices. Positive punishment and negative punishment share the most: 11 questions.

The pair	Our questions with both	The difference
Positive punishment or negative punishment	11	Both make a behavior less likely. Positive adds something after it; negative takes something away.
Escape or attention	9	Escape gets a task taken away. Attention gets a response from another person.
Extinction or punishment	8	Extinction stops the reinforcer that kept the behavior going. Punishment adds or removes something else.
Attention or automatic reinforcement	8	Attention needs another person. Automatic reinforcement comes from the behavior itself.
Positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement	7	Both make a behavior more likely. Positive adds something; negative takes something away.
Latency or duration	7	Latency runs from the cue to the start of the behavior. Duration runs from its start to its end.
Generalization or maintenance	4	Generalization is the skill with new people, places or things. Maintenance is the skill lasting after teaching stops.
Trend or variability	3	Trend is the overall direction of the data. Variability is the bounce around it.

Counted from the RBT class’s practice questions on November 14, 2026. A question counts when both terms appear among its four choices.

Each flashcard draws its four choices from one content area, so a term’s twin is often among them.

A. Data Collection and Graphing

Continuous measurement: You record every occurrence of a behavior, by counting each one or timing each one.
Frequency: You count each time a behavior happens during an observation.
Rate: The count divided by the observation time: 12 requests in 6 minutes is 2 per minute.
Duration: How long a behavior lasts, timed from its start to its end.
Latency: The time from a specific event, like an instruction, until the behavior starts.
Interresponse time (IRT): The time from the end of one response to the start of the next.
Discontinuous measurement: You record only a sample of behavior, interval by interval, and report the percentage of intervals scored.
Partial-interval recording: An interval counts if the behavior happens at any time during it, so it overestimates behavior.
Whole-interval recording: An interval counts only if the behavior lasts all of it, so it underestimates behavior.
Momentary time sampling: An interval counts only if the behavior is happening the moment it ends. It can err either way.
Permanent-product recording: You measure what a behavior leaves behind, like the share of a worksheet completed, when you can’t watch it directly.
Operational definition: A description of behavior you can see and count: “tapped the table twice,” not “was upset.”
Trend: The direction of the best-fitting straight line through one phase’s data: up, down or flat.
Level: The mean of the data within one phase of a graph.
Variability: How much the data points bounce up and down around their overall direction.
Procedural fidelity: How closely you carry out a procedure as written. Accurate data don’t make up for a procedure you changed.

B. Behavior Assessment

Preference assessment: A structured way to find which items a client prefers, to predict what may work as a reinforcer.
Paired-stimulus assessment: You offer two items at a time, pairing each item once with every other item in random order.
Multiple stimulus without replacement (MSWO): The client picks one item from an array, you take it away, and you repeat until all are picked or none is picked within 30 seconds.
Skill assessment: A look at what a learner can already do and what is missing: curriculum-based, developmental or social skills.
ABC data: A record of what happened immediately before a behavior, the behavior itself, and what happened immediately after.
Functional behavior assessment (FBA): The process for finding why a behavior happens. It typically includes indirect assessment, descriptive assessment and a functional analysis.
Functional analysis: Brief test conditions that vary demands, attention or materials to show what keeps a behavior going. It is the field’s gold standard.

C. Behavior Acquisition

Positive reinforcement: You add something after a behavior, and the behavior increases: you praise a request, and requests go up.
Negative reinforcement: You remove something after a behavior, and the behavior increases: you take the task away when a client asks for a break.
Fixed ratio (FR): You reinforce after a set number of responses. FR 3 means every third response.
Variable ratio (VR): You reinforce after a number of responses that changes around an average.
Fixed interval (FI): You reinforce the first response after a set time has passed. Time alone earns nothing.
Conditioned reinforcer: Something whose value is learned through pairing with primary reinforcers like food. Praise can become one.
Token economy: The client earns tokens for a target behavior and trades them for backup reinforcers, like a sticker chart that ends in a prize.
Discrete-trial teaching (DTT): Teaching in repeated, structured trials: an instruction, the response, a planned consequence, then a pause.
Natural environment teaching (NET): You teach a target skill inside an everyday routine, like requesting during snack time.
Task analysis: A multistep task broken into its steps, in order from first to last.
Forward chaining: You teach the first step to mastery, then add the later steps in order.
Backward chaining: You teach the last step first, then work back to the earlier ones.
Discriminative stimulus (SD): The cue in whose presence a response has been reinforced, so the response becomes more likely: the coat picture when you say “Touch coat.”
S-delta: A cue in whose presence a response isn’t reinforced, like the shoes picture when you say “Touch coat.”
Least-to-most prompting: You give a brief chance to respond alone, then the least intrusive help that works.
Most-to-least prompting: You start with the most intrusive help, like guiding hands, then fade to lighter help.
Prompt fading: You reduce extra help gradually, so the client ends up responding independently.
Generalization: A skill shows up beyond the conditions where it was taught, like asking someone new for a cup.
Maintenance: A skill continues after some or all of the teaching procedures stop.
Shaping: You reinforce closer and closer tries at a target: “w,” then “wa,” then “water.”

D. Behavior Reduction

Escape: The function when a behavior gets a task or demand taken away, which is negative reinforcement.
Attention: The function when a behavior gets a response from another person, which is positive reinforcement.
Access to tangibles: The function when a behavior gets an item or food, like reaching for a toy and getting it.
Automatic reinforcement: The function when the behavior’s own sensory effect keeps it going, like the feel of rocking.
Antecedent intervention: A change made before the behavior, to the setting or to how a task is presented.
Noncontingent reinforcement (NCR): You deliver a reinforcer on a time schedule, no matter what the client is doing.
High-probability request sequence: A few easy requests the client usually follows, then the harder one right after.
DRA: You reinforce a specific alternative behavior, like asking for a turn instead of grabbing.
DRI: You reinforce a behavior that can’t happen at the same time, like hands flat on the table instead of clapping.
DRO: You reinforce an interval that passes without the problem behavior.
Functional communication training (FCT): You teach a way to ask that replaces the problem behavior, like asking for a break instead of pushing work away.
Extinction: You withhold the reinforcer that kept a behavior going, so it decreases. It has to be that reinforcer, not just anything.
Extinction burst: The behavior increases at first when its reinforcer stops. It can happen; it isn’t guaranteed.
Positive punishment: You add something unpleasant after a behavior, and the behavior decreases.
Negative punishment: You remove something pleasant after a behavior, and the behavior decreases, like losing a favorite game.
Time-out: A form of negative punishment you use only when it’s in the written plan and your supervisor has verified your competence.

E. Documentation and Reporting

Objective session note: A note that says what happened, “pushed the worksheet away,” not your judgment of it, “was lazy.”
Clinical direction: Your supervisor’s guidance on how you deliver services. Ask for it promptly when data or a request seem off.

F. Ethics

RBT Ethics Code: The BACB’s standards for your work: benefit others, treat people with compassion, dignity and respect, act with integrity, and stay within your competence.
Supervision: At least 5% of your monthly service hours, with two real-time contacts a month: one individual, and one where you’re watched with a client.
Multiple relationship: Mixing your professional role with a friendship, family or work tie to a client. Tell your supervisor and document it.
Gift rule: You don’t give or accept gifts worth more than $10 with clients, stakeholders or supervisors, and a stricter employer policy wins.
Confidentiality: Protecting client information: you share it only under your supervisor’s direction or where the law allows, and never post identifying photos or details.
Self-reporting: You tell the BACB yourself about a reportable event within 30 days of it, or of learning about it.
Recertification: Renewing your credential every 2 years if you were certified or recertified in 2026 or later, with 12 hours of professional development in each cycle.
Cultural humility: Questioning your own biases and assumptions, with families and coworkers, as an ongoing habit.

Know the words? Try them in questions

A flashcard shows whether you know what a word means. A question shows whether you can use it. Our check is 25 questions from all six areas. You see the reason after every answer, and your score by area at the end, weakest first. You don’t need an account, and at the exam’s pace it takes under half an hour.

The exam itself is 85 questions in 90 minutes; the RBT Handbook has the rest of its rules. If you’d rather start with the ABCs, lesson 1 is The ABCs of behavior.

Start the free 25-question check