A free RBT practice test: ninety questions, an explanation on every one, no sign-up, and a score broken out by the six content areas.
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In later stages of discrete trial training for a complex skill, what is the role of reinforcement thinning?
Pick an answer
The explanation appears here the moment you answer. Nothing is timed and nothing is scored against you.
Keys: 1–4 answer · N next · R restart
The weighting
Most RBT practice tests are a pile of questions. This one is a sample, because BACB publishes something almost no certifying board publishes: the exact number of scored items in each content area of the Test Content Outline (3rd ed.).
Nineteen of the 75 scored items are Behavior Acquisition. Eight are Behavior Assessment. That is a ratio of more than two to one between the biggest block and the smallest, and it is public. A practice set that ignores it is training you for an exam that does not exist.
| Content area | Scored items on the exam | Share | Questions in this test | Where to study it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A · Data Collection and Graphing | 13 | 17% | 16 | Study guide |
| B · Behavior Assessment | 8 | 11% | 9 | Study guide |
| C · Behavior Acquisition | 19 | 25% | 23 | Behavior Acquisition |
| D · Behavior Reduction | 14 | 19% | 17 | Behavior Reduction |
| E · Documentation and Reporting | 10 | 13% | 12 | Study guide |
| F · Ethics | 11 | 15% | 13 | Study guide |
The percentages are BACB's own and are explicitly rounded. Ten further items are delivered on exam day as unscored pilot questions.
Four moves
Run the weighted ninety cold
Before you revise anything. A score you earn after a week of cramming tells you what you crammed. A cold run tells you which of the six areas is actually thin, which is the only thing you need from a first attempt.
Read every explanation — including the ones you got right
Most of what this exam tests is discrimination between neighbouring terms: DRO against DRA, partial interval against momentary time sampling, negative reinforcement against punishment. In a total, a lucky guess and a confident answer look identical, and only the explanation tells them apart.
Filter to your two worst areas and run them again
The area grid filters the bank by area. Two areas, not six. You cannot repair everything in one sitting, and trying to is how people spend a week and move nothing.
Then read, instead of re-testing
Repeating the same ninety questions teaches you the ninety questions. When an area is genuinely weak, go to the study guide for the order, then into Behavior Acquisition or Behavior Reduction for the depth — and come back here to check whether the reading landed.
85
questions delivered
75 scored + 10 pilot
90
minutes
in person, Pearson VUE
4
options per item
one correct
43
tasks
across 6 content areas
Eighty-five items in ninety minutes is a little over a minute each, which is generous by testing standards and still fast enough that a long deliberation on item nine costs you item eighty. Ten of those items are unscored pilot questions and you are not told which, so there is nothing to spot and nothing to skip. Scheduling, retakes and exam-day logistics live on the exam format page; the route to sitting it at all is on the certification page.
Three missing numbers
Three figures appear on almost every other RBT practice page, and none of them appears here.
The passing score. BACB sets it with a modified Angoff process — a panel of certified subject-matter experts, approved by the board — and does not publish the result. A new score was established for the 3rd-edition outline. Every percentage circulating on the open web is folklore.
The pass rate. What BACB actually publishes is first-time pass rates broken down by 40-hour training provider, once a year, and the spread between providers is very large. There is no published overall figure, and the third-party aggregates that claim one disagree with each other.
The cost. There is a BACB application fee and a separate Pearson VUE appointment fee, plus whatever your 40-hour training charged. The current table is in the RBT Handbook on bacb.com, and it is republished quarterly.
Study the outline. There is no target percentage to reach, because no one has ever published one.
No — and be wary of any site that says its questions are real. Examination items are secure, and publishing them would breach the examination-security terms every candidate agrees to. These ninety are written against the RBT Test Content Outline (3rd ed.) and sampled to its published item counts, which is as close as a lawful practice test gets.
No. The examination is computer-based but delivered in person, at an authorized Pearson VUE testing center. Practice online as much as you like; the attempt itself happens at a center.
There is no such number, and anyone who gives you one invented it. BACB sets the passing score through a modified Angoff process and does not publish it, and a new score was established for the 3rd-edition outline. A readiness test that does work: take a question you answered correctly and say out loud why each of the other three options is wrong. If you cannot, you guessed.
They do different jobs, so the answer is both, in order. Cards — Quizlet decks, or your own — build recall of vocabulary: what DRL stands for, what makes a reinforcer conditioned. A ninety-question set makes you choose between four plausible options against the clock, which is the thing the exam actually asks of you. Cards early, full sets late, and read the task list alongside both so you know which terms are even on the outline.
It is more than one number, which is why a total from a blog is worth nothing. There is a BACB certification application fee, a separate Pearson VUE appointment fee payable per attempt, and the 40-hour training is a third, variable, third-party cost. BACB republishes the RBT Handbook quarterly and reserves the right to amend its fees, so read the current fee table on bacb.com before you apply.
Eighty-five are delivered: 75 scored items plus 10 unscored pilot items, four options each, one correct, inside 90 minutes. This practice test runs ninety on purpose — slightly longer than the real thing, at the same per-area proportions. Everything else about the day is on the exam format page.
Next step
Run it cold, then read
Ninety questions, an explanation on every one, and a score broken out across the six content areas.