I was once working with an adolescent who could dress independently, but often put shirts on backwards. At the time, it was one of his goals, and I was on a mission to teach this to him. I came up with numerous instructional programs that failed. Some of those included giving fake instructions: The tag goes in the back; there is no tag in the front. I had some more reasonable ideas too, like attaching a giant piece of paper to the tag and trying to fade it out, a variety of prompting and fading procedures, and I’m sure many, many more that I forgot. At the time, I was spending time in AOL chat rooms to get advice (AOL chat rooms was the 1990s version of an inconvenient group text without a phone). I also reached out to famous behavior analysts who were happy to offer email advice or in-person at conferences.
Eventually, I managed to find an effective teaching procedure. It was very exciting! Keep trying until you find a way to be effective. Of course, I did multiple exemplar training to make sure he could do it with a wide variety of shirts, with different people, and in different locations. Mom called and said that he was doing it at home!
About 3-4 weeks after the program was over, I was maintaining it about 1X per week. Then, I noticed he came in with shirts with no tags. This happened a couple of weeks in a row. I called the parent, who reported the tags were bothering him so she cut all the tags off of all his shirts, removing the only indicator he had learned to determine the front from the back.
Success is judged by what happens after the program is over. This program took enormous amounts time and effort, and it was a waste of everyone’s time. It was an enormous opportunity for me to Poogi, though. In practical situations, if you look at what happened to many programs on last year’s IEP or insurance treatment plan, you will find this effect happens all the time. Everyone is so busy. There is so little time. What if we only worked on teaching things that were important enough to matter in the long run?