Ep. 51: Antecedent Strategies in Behavior Plans – Part 9 of the FBA Mini-Series

In this episode, we break down antecedent strategies—the proactive steps you can take to prevent challenging behaviors before they escalate. We explain how these strategies differ from setting event strategies, why they’re essential in a behavior plan, and how to apply them effectively in real-world settings.

🔑 Key Takeaways
✅ Antecedent vs. Setting Event Strategies – Learn the difference and when to use each.
✅ Proactive Supports – Identify triggers early and modify tasks before behaviors occur.
✅ Flexible but Clear Plans – Ensure strategies are individualized and easy to implement.
✅ Avoid Overloading Behavior Plans – Focus on the most effective strategies for each student.
✅ Monitor & Adjust – Track effectiveness and avoid changing strategies too soon.

📚 Resources and Ideas
📌 FBA Mini-Series Episodes – Catch up on previous episodes! 🎧 Start at the beginning
📌 Venn Diagram of Setting Event vs. Antecedent Strategies plus other antecedent strategy visuals

Join Us...
🎙 Next Episode: Pros and Cons of working as a BCBA in the clinical vs. school settings
🌟 Subscribe: Don’t miss upcoming episodes on practical strategies and must-have resources for behavior support!
📢 Share this episode with a teacher, BCBA, or administrator looking for fresh approaches to special education and behavior analysis!
💬 Get Involved: Share your ideas in our Facebook group or tag us on social media. @TheMisfitBehaviorists
📚 Connect: Follow us for more tips, tools, and discussions about all things behavior and education.  

Join the Facebook group for collaboration and freebies: The Misfit Behaviorists

😍 More, you say? We’re here for you!

• Apple podcast | The Misfit Behaviorists
• Instagram | @‌themisfitbehavioristspodcast
• YouTube | @‌themisfitbehaviorists

👋 Find us!

• Audra | ABA in School
• Caitlin | Beltran’s Behavior Basics
• Sami | B.A.S.S.

🖱️ Rate, Review, Like & Subscribe so you don’t miss an episode! Showing this love helps us get out to more educators out there!

Transcript

Ep. 51: Antecedent Strategies in Behavior Plans – Part 9 of the FBA Mini-Series

Audra: [00:00:00] we'll see students when you present them with something and you know it's a trigger or you start to see their physical signs show that their anxiety is increasing or something. And you're able to modify the task before the behavior happens. That would be considered kind of an antecedent strategy. 

Intro: Welcome to the Misfit Behaviorist Podcast. Join your hosts, Audra Jensen and Caitlin Beltran, here to bring you evidence based strategies with a student centered focus. Let's get started. 

Audra: Welcome back to the Misfit Behaviorists. We are here together, me and Caitlin, because Sami is still really sick and I wanted to get done another behavior plan episode for you. I think we have about five more planned out. We'll do them like every other week or once a month or something until we get them all done. But this week, Sami has been really sick with everybody's winter crud that's been going on. And so, Caitlin agreed to come listen to me yammer and chime in. 

So last time we had talked about setting event strategies. So [00:01:00] we're talking about we finished the whole FBA portion, Caitlin, and now we're sort of just talking about the behavior plan and kind of the pieces that you put together to create the actual plan itself. So, last time we talked about those setting event strategies, and so today we're talking about antecedent strategies, and how they're a little bit different, and how you can implement both of them.

When we're talking about setting event strategies, we're talking about those things that reduce the conditions that increase the likelihood of a behavior happening, which is basically stuff that you can do way ahead of time, that kind of sets the stage to prevent the behavior from ever occurring.

And then the antecedent strategies is more the stuff that you can do in the moment before, when you start to see a student start to escalate, or you know that something is a trigger. These are things that you can do kind of right before, immediately, that prevents that trigger from happening in the first place. Is that how you've kind of understood the difference between the two as well? 

Caitlin: Yes, totally. I was just chatting about this today with [00:02:00] somebody, so this is perfect. 

Audra: So I made this little Venn diagram to talk about kind of, and a lot of things can be either. It kind of depends on how you frame it. Some things are clearly setting event strategies. Some things are clearly antecedent strategies. A lot of things can be either or, so it's kind of how you implement the strategy. We're talking about setting event strategies, we're talking about like adequate sleep, snacks, making sure your student is getting their medical needs met their internal needs met, adjusting for illness. If they've just come back from being away for a long time being sick and how you're going to adjust those expectations when they come back. If you know that they're not feeling well, then you're going to adjust things beforehand. That would be a setting event, pre teaching those expectations. So preparing beforehand, not in the kind of that early, right before things happen, but practicing things beforehand. Those are like when you're practicing, role playing, those type of things, pre teaching things, those would be setting event strategies. Things that [00:03:00] you know ahead of time are stressful for the student, and avoiding them or eliminating them completely, so reducing those stress triggers. So those are all the things that I think of like setting event strategies. Are there other ones that you can think about that you would consider just being setting events?

Caitlin: I don't know if this fits into that neat little diagram, but maybe just, like, coordinating with family, making sure you're consistent expectations. So, like, as far as snacks, for example, like, that's something you could work out with the family to check the daily log if they ate a good breakfast or something like that.

Audra: Yeah, actually, that's really good. Thinking about anything that happens way before that you can plan ahead for. And that's just a simple way to think about it. 

And then those antecedent strategies would be things that happened right before. When you're using a token board, and this is one that's a little bit gray. It can be a setting event strategy, but usually it's something that's happening right now , as long as you've pre taught it, preventing a behavior from happening in the first place. So, a token aboard when you're modifying a task. So, a lot of times we'll see students when [00:04:00] you present them with something and you know it's a trigger or you start to see their physical signs show that their anxiety is increasing or something. And you're able to modify the task before the behavior happens. That would be considered kind of an antecedent strategy.

Providing an immediate break. So a break, and you'll see when I get to kind of the middle, providing a break can be either an antecedent or a setting event. But If you see a student that is starting to escalate a little bit or they're starting to get a little anxious, providing them an option to go on a break at that time, that would be considered an antecedent strategy.

And reminders about expectations and rewards and things that are coming up using your kind of first thens and stuff. Moving the student, so if a student is near other things that are triggering, so moving the student away from something or getting them out of the situation would be considered an antecedent strategy. Any other ones you can think about that would be kind of more uniquely antecedent? 

Caitlin: As far as break, I was going to say like arranging their schedule. So just building in breaks, like even before you're [00:05:00] waiting for that precursor behavior. Maybe it's like break between, you know, two math periods or break between every 10 trials or whatever it might be. So it's just automatically antecedently like I'm going to plan for it. Instead of waiting for that behavior to happen. 

Audra: Yeah, and I think I put breaks in the middle kind of for that reason, because like if you're planning way ahead would be kind of your setting event, you're already have it planned into the schedule. But then if you have it where you see something starting to happen, you're preventing that trigger from happening, that would be antecedent. So I think that might even be the first one. Oh, breaks in general. Either way, there's sensory breaks. You can plan them out beforehand. That's a really good one. Just breaks in general, it depends on how you're using them.

A visual schedule would kind of be either, because either you're planning your visual schedule, you know, beforehand, you're setting things up to prevent the opportunities from happening, but then it also could be you're using, and I've done this many times, Changing up the schedule in the moment to make it more likely the student will be successful.

So, if you have certain activities coming up, and the student is having an off [00:06:00] day, being able to arrange those differently would be antecedent. So, that kind of be either. Increasing those preferred activities, and that again could be kind of either whether you're planning beforehand certain activities work really well for the student, or again, you're making a schedule modification in the moment to prevent that trigger from happening.

Using transition warnings could be either. So, I mean, there's transition warnings. We use that all the time for all students. That doesn't necessarily mean we're preventing behaviors in all the students. It's just kind of a good strategy to use. But for some students, they need to have that warning before a transition to prevent a behavior from happening and so that would be antecedent. And then the last couple are like providing attention and praise, offering choices that could be either breaking down tasks. And there could be like a million other things as I was starting to jot these down. I'm like, I have to stop somewhere.

My point of just putting this together is As you're creating, a lot of our BIP templates always have setting event strategies and antecedent strategies, and [00:07:00] I think a lot of teachers get confused of what's what. And so really, I think the biggest thing to be aware of is, are you doing it planned out in order to prevent any situation from happening, or are you starting to see a trigger that's coming and you're making a modification in the moment?

Why do you think it's so important to have both of those? 

Caitlin: Well, I think it's like you have to have a plan and then you have to have a plan B and a CDEF. But we would like to think that we're going to plan for everything, like you're saying, well in advance, but we all know that, you know, the best laid plans. So then we want to have that just, you know, Slightly plan B. So when the student comes in, like you said, after being sick or starts having precursor behaviors, and we're not sure why, or starts talking about the next transition coming, like, we're building in some kind of plan B strategies to use when our initial outline of just like best practice, good strategies is not working.

Audra: Yeah, I've had plenty of students where we actually on paper put [00:08:00] plan A day, plan B day, and you can tell when they get off the bus what kind of a day we're having.

Okay, so this is the last thing we're going to go over, the kind of the last 5 points that I thought about. Knowing the difference between those setting event strategies, those long-term conditions that you work on and those antecedent strategies, Just don't confuse them. You want when you're creating your behavior plan that you have specifically for each one why it's an antecedent, why it's a setting event because they kind of served different purposes. 

And then always individualized. We don't want Any of our behavior plans to just be check boxes that have been checked or I've seen a lot of behavior plans that have this like 500 strategies in place. It's like, well, really think about that specific learner. Is this one strategy actually making a difference for that learner? You've seen those behavior plans that are like, 

Caitlin: I'm thinking of like the IEP section. Sometimes it gets to like accommodations and it's like, Oh yeah. And all of these. 

Audra: That's another one. Yeah. [00:09:00] 

Caitlin: Extra time, transition cues, positive reinforcement, and they're just very, very generic. I think we talked about this another time where we talked about transition warnings. For some kids, they're really helpful, and for other kids, they're not helpful at all and they could be setting off the behavior, so.

Audra: Yeah, and I think you made this point in one of our recent ones, I think it was really good that if you have 50 things, you know, and they are really good strategies, and they may all even be really good for that learner, you still don't want to put 50 strategies in there. So pick like the 5 that are either unique to that learner, or you think would make the most difference, whatever you think is going to be most helpful, because otherwise you give some of these plans to teachers and staff members, they're not going to implement them. They're going to be so overwhelmed with all the content in there. Prioritize the things that are most important for that specific learner. 

The third thing, kind of be clear. So making sure that all your strategies tell the staff exactly what to do. So rather than just saying a visual schedule or something, be really specific. What do you mean for this specific student? Do they need all 15 steps of the day? Or do they [00:10:00] just need the first then in order to understand what's going on? Are we going to implement token boards all day, every day? Or is it just During this activity, and then we're going to go to 5 tokens, whatever it is, be really specific so that your staff can implement and you can take data on knowing if something is working or not working.

Caitlin: I love that sometimes when I'm writing up a plan, if they have a really specific schedule or token board I'll try to snip it , copy and paste it right onto the plan. So that way there's, like, no confusion. Oh, that token board is for transitions, or this schedule's for work, or whatever.

Audra: That's a really good idea. I like that. And then the fourth thing is be really proactive. So use your strategies before, I mean, this is where you really have to learn your learner, before those behaviors start happening. Because once they start happening, it's like that rolling the Rock down the hill, it's going to just pick up speed. So the earlier you can catch it, that's why those setting event strategies are so important. And also the antecedent strategies, once you start to see what's going on. Later on, we're going to talk in one of the other ones about creating [00:11:00] and using a crisis cycle for every learner that you have, especially on a behavior plan. Being able to really catch Those anxiety trigger things starting to happen so that you can implement some of the stuff before having that rock start down the hill.

And then the last thing, as always, monitor effectiveness and adjust things as needed. I don't know how many times I've seen behavior plans just get passed on year after year after year and just nobody ever looks at it or analyzes, you know, are these strategies working? Are we still using this one or modifying? They just keep going on. It's like, you need to adjust these. 

Caitlin: Or sometimes I've seen the opposite and I know I'm guilty of this too, like we were just talking this week about one of our learners who we're really trying to figure out what's maintaining this behavior and we're trying to adjust our strategies and sometimes I'm thinking are we doing, are we changing it too much because after one bad session or one bad day, we've all been there when a learner's behaviors are very intense and it's like, Oh, I got to change this right now. It's not working, but really reminding yourself to give it that [00:12:00] time. To really see if changes are coming from your strategies. 

Audra: Another thing we will do in a few weeks when we talk about kind of the wrapping up of the behavior plan is creating some sort of fidelity checklist. So you have all of these strategies that you created for a learner and you regularly just not just when you're analyzing the behavior plan, but regularly go through and check them off. Are they being implemented? Are they being successful? Look at the data. And just making good those data-based decisions that we're supposed to be famous for. 

Caitlin: Yes, perfect. 

Audra: Yeah, so that's all I got today. It was a quick, easy one. I think the next one we're talking about replacement behaviors and teaching teaching strategies. This is something you and I did not too long ago as a full podcast. But then it's also part of creating a behavior pattern. So we'll be doing that. 

Intro: Thanks for listening to the Misfit Behaviorists and be sure to tune in next week for more tips and tricks. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss an episode.