Applied Behavioral Analysis

Socially important behavior can be changed deliberately. The preceding chapters describe basic principles of behavior and how practitioners can use behavior change tactics derived from those principles to increase appropriate behaviors, achieve desired stimulus controls, teach new behaviors, and decrease problem be- haviors. Although achieving initial behavior changes often requires procedures that are intrusive or costly, or for a variety of other reasons cannot or should not be continued indefinitely, it is almost always important that the newly wrought behavior changes continue. Similarly, in many instances the intervention needed to produce new patterns of responding cannot be implemented in all of the envi- ronments in which the new behavior would benefit the learner. Nor is it possible in certain skill areas to teach directly all of the specific forms of the target behav- ior the learner may need. Practitioners face no more challenging or important task than that of designing, implementing, and evaluating interventions that produce behavior changes that continue after the intervention is terminated, appear in rele- vant settings and stimulus situations other than those in which the intervention was conducted, and/or spread to other related behaviors that were not taught di- rectly. Chapter 28 defines the major types of generalized behavior change and de- scribes the strategies and tactics applied behavior analysts use to achieve them.

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Promoting Generalized Behavior Change

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Generalization and Maintenance of Behavior Change

Key Terms

behavior trap contrived contingency contrived mediating stimulus general case analysis generalization generalization across subjects generalization probe

generalization setting indiscriminable contingency instructional setting lag reinforcement schedule multiple exemplar training naturally existing contingency

programming common stimuli response generalization response maintenance setting/situation generalization teaching sufficient examples teaching loosely

Behavior Analyst Certification Board® BCBA® & BCABA® Behavior Analyst Task List©,Third Edition

Content Area 3: Principles, Processes, and Concepts

3-12 Define and provide examples of generalization and discrimination.

9-28 Use behavior change procedures to promote stimulus and response generalization.

9-29 Use behavior change procedures to promote maintenance.

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Chapter 28 Generalization and Maintenance of Behavior Change 615

Sherry’s teacher implemented an intervention that helped Sherry to complete each part of multiple-part, in- school assignments before submitting them and begin- ning another activity. Now, three weeks after the program ended, most of the work Sherry submits as “finished” is incomplete and her stick-with-a-task-until- it’s-finished behavior is as poor as it was before the in- tervention began.

Ricardo has just begun his first competitive job working as a copy machine operator in a downtown business of- fice. In spite of his long history of distractibility and poor endurance, Ricardo had learned to work indepen- dently for several hours at a time in the copy room at the vocational training center. His employer, however, is complaining that Ricardo frequently stops working after a few minutes to seek attention from others. Ricardo may soon lose his job.

Brian is a 10-year-old boy diagnosed with autism. In an effort to meet an objective on his individualized educa- tion program that targets functional language and com- munication skills, Brian’s teacher taught him to say, “Hello, how are you?” as a greeting. Now, whenever Brian meets anyone, he invariably responds with, “Hello, how are you?” Brian’s parents are concerned that their son’s language seems stilted and parrot-like.

Each of these three situations illustrates a com- mon type of teaching failure insofar as the most socially significant behavior changes are those

that last over time, are used by the learner in all relevant settings and situations, and are accompanied by changes in other relevant responses. The student who learns to count money and make change in the classroom today must be able to count and make change at the conve- nience store tomorrow and at the supermarket next month. The beginning writer who has been taught to write a few good sentences in school must be able to write many more meaningful sentences when writing notes or letters to family or friends. To perform below this stan- dard is more than just regrettable; it is a clear indication that the initial instruction was not entirely successful.

In the first scenario, the mere passage of time re- sulted in Sherry losing her ability to complete assign- ments. A change of scenery threw Ricardo off his game; the excellent work habits he had acquired at the voca- tional training center disappeared completely when he arrived at the community job site. Although Brian used his new greeting skill, its restricted form was not serving him well in the real world. In a very real sense, the in- struction they received failed all three of these people.

Applied behavior analysts face no more challeng- ing or important task than that of designing, imple- menting, and evaluating interventions that produce generalized outcomes. This chapter defines the major

types of generalized behavior change and describes the strategies and tactics researchers and practitioners use most often to promote them.

Generalized Behavior Change: Definitions and Key Concepts When Baer, Wolf, and Risley (1968) described the emerg- ing field of applied behavior analysis, they included gen- erality of behavior change as one of the discipline’s seven defining characteristics.

A behavior change may be said to have generality if it proves durable over time, if it appears in a wide variety of possible environments, or if it spreads to a wide vari- ety of related behaviors. (p. 96)

In their seminal review paper, “An Implicit Technol- ogy of Generalization,” Stokes and Baer (1977) also stressed those three facets of generalized behavior change—across time, settings, and behaviors—when they defined generalization as

the occurrence of relevant behavior under different, non- training conditions (i.e., across subjects, settings, peo- ple, behaviors, and/or time) without the scheduling of the same events in those conditions. Thus, generaliza- tion may be claimed when no extratraining manipula- tions are needed for extratraining changes; or may be claimed when some extra manipulations are necessary, but their cost is clearly less than that of the direct inter- vention. Generalization will not be claimed when simi- lar events are necessary for similar effects across conditions. (p. 350)

Stokes and Baer’s pragmatic orientation toward gen- eralized behavior change has proven useful for applied behavior analysis. They stated simply that if a trained behavior occurs at other times or in other places without it having to be retrained completely at those times or in those places, or if functionally related behaviors occur that were not taught directly, then generalized behavior change has occurred. The following sections provide def- initions and examples of the three basic forms of gener- alized behavior change: response maintenance, setting/ situation generalization, and response generalization. Box 28.1, “Perspectives on the Sometimes Confusing and Misleading Terminology of Generalization,” dis- cusses the many and varied terms applied behavior ana- lysts use to describe these outcomes.