Which of the following intervention strategies emphasizes manipulating antecedents to assist in decreasing disruptive classroom behavior?

• A. Reactive
• B. Contingency management
• C. Proactive
• D. Functional assessment

Answer: (C)

The main idea here is using antecedent-based, or proactive, strategies to prevent disruptive behavior before it starts. By changing what happens before a student acts—such as the environment, instructions, prompts, or expectations—you reduce the likelihood of disruption occurring in the first place. This can include things like giving clear rules, priming students for what comes next, adjusting task difficulty, reducing distractions in the room, or offering preferred choices to encourage on-task behavior.

Reactive strategies, by contrast, respond after a disruption has occurred. Contingency management focuses on consequences that follow behavior, not on altering the conditions that precede it. Functional assessment is an evaluation process to uncover the reasons a behavior occurs, which then guides intervention but is not itself the preventive antecedent-focused approach. So, emphasizing antecedents to reduce disruption points to a proactive, antecedent-based intervention.