Gradual Change Procedures in Behavior Analysis
Label every gradual step as stimulus, response, or reinforcement and your procedure becomes clear to everyone.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Kincaid (2023) wrote a how-to guide, not an experiment. He sorted every gradual-change tactic into three buckets: stimulus, response, and reinforcement. Each bucket holds familiar tools like fading, shaping, and thinning.
He gives each bucket clear labels so you can pick the right tool and explain it to parents, teachers, or payers without jargon.
What they found
The paper gives a one-page decision tree. If the change you want is in the antecedent, pick a stimulus move. If the change is in the form of the behavior, pick a response move. If the change is in the schedule or type of payoff, pick a reinforcement move.
No new data appear; the value is the tidy naming system.
How this fits with other research
Older lab work already shows the pieces. SLOANE (1964) added S- lights step-by-step and watched generalization gradients slide along the flicker line. That is a stimulus-category move, exactly where Kincaid slots it.
Fields et al. (1991) taught preschoolers matching-to-sample by reinforcing closer and closer approximations. Their shaping protocol is a textbook example of Kincaid’s response category.
Austin et al. (2015) thinned token schedules from FR 5 to FR 50. The pigeons kept working, illustrating Kincaid’s reinforcement category in action.
Together the older studies prove the three buckets work; Kincaid simply labels them so you can pick faster.
Why it matters
Next time you write a plan, tag each step with Kincaid’s label. Write “stimulus fade” when you dim prompts, “response shape” when you raise the bar for articulation, or “reinforcement thin” when you stretch the token ratio. The label keeps your team, your supervisor, and your funding source aligned on what lever you are actually pulling.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Open your last plan, tag each step with Kincaid’s three labels, and delete any step you can’t tag.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
A wide variety of procedures within behavior analysis use gradual change in stimuli, response requirements, reinforcement, or some combination thereof, to effectively change behavior. Such procedures include shaping, thinning, fading, and chaining. Collectively, gradual change procedures represent a conceptually systematic technology of behavior change with wide-ranging empirical support across diverse settings and contexts. However, navigating the gradual change literature can be challenging. Similar terms are used to describe functionally distinct procedures (e.g., stimulus fading, delay fading, demand fading), and distinct terms are used to describe functionally similar procedures (e.g., leaning, demand fading). I propose a taxonomy in which gradual change procedures are categorized according to the functional component of the contingency on which they act. Three broad categories are proposed: Gradual Changes in Discriminative Stimuli, Response Requirement, and Reinforcement. I provide examples of research in each category, across basic and applied settings, including terminology used by the author(s) to describe each procedure. Finally, I discuss benefits of this framework for consumers of the literature.
Behavior Analysis in Practice, 2023 · doi:10.1007/s40617-022-00689-6