Sometimes I’ve seen programs that are teaching 20, 30, 50, or even 60 behavior change programs at the same time. When there are that many behavior change programs, many of them often are ineffective. But let’s assume that all / most of those behavior changes do seem effective. My question always is: Will the child still be able to do this skill in one year when you are no longer working on it?
Don Baer taught us that there are really only two choices when it comes to maintenance of behavior changes.
- The behavior change meets a natural contingency that will maintain it in the future.
- We program maintenance forever.
Most of the time we are not in a position that we will be able to maintain behavior changes forever. Therefore the main thing that matters is that the behavior change will eventually meet a natural contingency. BCBAs talk a lot about natural contingencies, but in practice I see very little effort put into this critical concept.
It’s great that he made an independent initiation to peers during lunch 3X for 5 consecutive days. But…
Did you have to praise and say “Wow, that’s so great talking to your friends?”
Did you have to give tokens for talking?”
Did the peer respond in a way that was reinforcing to the child- so that it might maintain initiations in the future without intervention?
If you need other reinforcers / interventions at this time, that does NOT mean that the intervention is a failure. Just don’t fool yourself that you made a meaningful difference in the child’s life. This might have been an important step- but you aren’t there yet. If you don’t get to the point where it meets a natural contingency, it almost certainly won’t maintain in the long run and it won’t really matter.