Generalization and Maintenance of Behavior Change: Cooper, Heron, and Heward All Rights Reserved

Chapter 28:
Generalization and Maintenance

of Behavior Change
Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Applied Behavior Analysis, Second Edition All rights reserved
Generalized Behavior Change:
Definitions and Key Concepts
• Generality of behavior change as one of
the seven defining characteristics of ABA
(Baer, Wolf, & Risley, 1968)
• Generalization again defined and stressed
three important facets (i.e. time, settings,
& behaviors) (Stokes & Baer, 1977)

• Response maintenance
– Extent to which a learner continues to perform
the target behavior after a portion or all of the
intervention responsible for the behavior’s
initial appearance in the learner’s repertoire
has been terminated

• Setting/situation generalization
– Extent to which a learner emits the target
behavior in a setting or stimulus situation that
is different from the instructional setting

• Instructional setting
– Total environment where instruction occurs,
including any aspects of the environment,
planned or unplanned, that may influence the
learner’s acquisition and generalization of the
target behavior
• Generalization setting
– Any place or stimulus that differs in some
meaningful way from the from the instructional
setting and in which performance of the target
behavior is desired
• Response generalization
– Extent to which a learner emits untrained
responses that are functionally equivalent to
the trained target behavior

• The three forms of generalized behavior
change can occur:
– Isolation of one another
– In combination with each other

• Overgeneralization
– Outcome in which the behavior has come
under the control of a stimulus class that is
too broad (descriptive term)
– Learner emits the target behavior in the
presence of stimuli that, although similar in
some way to the instructional examples or
situation, are inappropriate occasions for the
behavior

Other Types of
Generalized Outcomes
• Generalization across subjects
– Changes in the behavior of people not directly
treated by an intervention as a function of
treatment contingencies applied to other
people
– Also called vicarious reinforcement, ripple
effect, & spillover effect

Other Types of
Generalized Outcomes
• Generalization map
– Combination of four basic types of
generalized treatment effects
• Across time (i.e. response maintenance)
• Across settings (i.e. setting/situation
generalization)
• Across behaviors (i.e. response generalization)
• Across subjects

Planning for
Generalized Behavior Change
• Generalized outcomes requires planning
– Selecting target behaviors that will meet
natural contingencies of reinforcement
– Specifying all desired variations of the target
behavior and the settings/situations in which it
should (and should not) occur after instruction
has ended

Planning for
• Target behaviors should be selected
carefully
– Numerous criteria have been suggested
• Example: age appropriateness of a skills & degree
to which it represents normalization
– Most important criterion
• A behavior is only functional to the extent that it
produces reinforcement for the learner
• Behaviors that are not followed by reinforcers on at
least some occasions will not be maintained
Planning for
• Naturally existing contingency
– Any contingency of reinforcement (or
punishment) that operates independent of the
behavior analyst’s or practitioner’s efforts
– Includes contingencies that operate without
social mediation and socially mediated
contingencies contrived and implemented by
other people in the generalization setting

Planning for
• Contrived Contingency
– Any contingency of reinforcement (or
punishment) designed and implemented by a
behavior analyst or practitioner to achieve
acquisition, maintenance, and/or
generalization of a targeted behavior change

Planning for
• List all the behaviors that need to be
changed
• List all the settings & situations in which
the target behavior should (or should not)
occur
• Pre-intervention planning
– Six stated possible benefits (Baer, 1999)

Strategies and Tactics for Promoting
• Teach the full range of relevant stimulus
conditions & response requirements
• Make the instructional setting similar to the
generalization setting
• Maximize the target behavior’s contact
with reinforcement in the generalization
setting
• Mediate generalization
• Train to generalize
Teach the Full Range of
Relevant Stimulus Conditions and
Response Requirements
• Teach sufficient stimulus examples
• Teach sufficient response examples
• General case analysis
• Negative teaching examples

• Teach every desired form of a target
behavior in every setting/situation in which
it may be needed
– Would eliminate need to program for
response generalization & setting/situation
generalization
– Seldom possible & never practical

• Teaching sufficient examples
– Teaching the learner to respond to a subset of
all of the possible stimulus & response
examples then assessing the learner’s
performance on untrained examples (referred
to as a generalization probe)

Teach Sufficient
Stimulus Examples
• General rule: more examples used during
instruction, more likely the learner will respond
correctly to untrained examples or situation
• Actual number of examples needed varies as a
function of:
– Complexity of the target behavior
– Teaching procedures employed
– Learner’s opportunities to emit the target behavior
under various conditions
– Naturally existing contingencies of reinforcement
– Learner’s history of reinforcement for generalized
responding
Teach Sufficient
Response Examples
• Practice with a variety of response
topographies helps to ensure that
acquisition of desired response forms &
promotes response generalization in the
form of untrained topographies
• Multiple exemplar training
– Usually incorporates both stimulus &
response variations

General Case Analysis
• A systematic method for selecting
teaching examples that represent the full
range of stimulus variations & response
requirements in the generalization setting
• Also referred to as general case strategy

Negative Teaching Examples
• Explicit teaching of where and when not to
use the target behavior may also be
necessary
• “Don’t do it” teaching examples provides
practice for discriminating stimulus
situations in which the target behavior
should not be emitted
• Sharpens stimulus control
Instructional Setting Similar to the
Generalization Setting
• Program common stimuli
– Including typical features of the generalization
setting into the instructional setting
• Teach loosely
– Randomly varying noncritical aspects of the
instructional setting within and across
teaching sessions

Programming Common Stimuli
• Benefits/advantages:
– Conducting instruction in natural settings is
not always possible or practical
– Community-based training may not expose
learners to the full range of examples they are
likely to encounter later in the same setting
– Instruction in natural settings may be less
effective & efficient than classroom instruction
because the trainer cannot halt natural flow
of events to contrive variety of training trials
– Instruction in simulated settings can be safer

Programming Common Stimuli
• Two step process
– Identify salient stimuli that characterize the
generalization setting(s)
– Incorporating those stimuli into the
instructional setting

Teaching Loosely
• Benefits/advantages:
– Reduces the likelihood that a single or small
group of noncritical stimuli will acquire
exclusive control over the target behavior
– Including a wide variety of noncritical stimuli
during instruction increases the probability
that the generalization setting will include at
least some of the stimuli that were present
during instruction

Teaching Loosely
• Suggestions (Baer, 1999):
– Use two or more teachers
– Teach in two or more places
– Teach from a variety of positions
– Vary your tone of voice
– Vary your choice of words
– Show stimuli from a variety of angles
– Have others present sometimes
– Vary the reinforcers
Teaching Loosely
• Suggestions continued (Baer, 1999):
– Teach in varying lighting conditions
– Teach in varying noise level conditions
– Vary decorations, furniture, & their locations
– Vary times of day for training sessions
– Vary the temperature of the training settings
– Vary the smells in the training settings
– Vary the content of what’s being taught
(within limits possible)

Maximize Contact with
Reinforcement
• Teach behavior to levels required by
natural contingencies
• Program indiscriminable contingencies
– Intermittent schedules of reinforcement
– Delayed rewards
• Set behavior traps
• Ask people in the generalization setting to
reinforce the behavior
• Teach the learner to recruit reinforcement
Reinforcement
• Indiscriminable contingency
– A contingency in which the learner cannot
discriminate whether the next response will
produce reinforcement
• Reinforcement is contingent on some, but not all,
occurrences of the target behavior in the
• The learner is unable to predict which responses
will produce reinforcement

Reinforcement
• Intermittent schedules of reinforcement
– Behaviors that have a history of intermittent
schedules of reinforcement often continue to
be emitted for relatively long periods of time
after reinforcement is no longer available
– All indiscriminable contingencies of
reinforcement involve intermittent schedules,
but not all schedules of intermittent
reinforcement are indiscriminable

Reinforcement
• Intermittent schedules and delayed reward
are similar in that
– Reinforcement is not delivered each time the
target behavior is emitted
– There is no clear stimuli to signal the learner
which current responses will produce
reinforcement

Reinforcement
• Classroom applications of indiscriminable
contingencies involving delayed rewards
(also features interdependent group
contingency)
– Spinners and dice
– Story fact recall game
– Numbered heads work together
– Intermittent grading

Reinforcement
• Success of using delayed rewards
depends on
– The indiscriminability of the contingency
– The learner understanding the relation
between emitting the target behavior at an
earlier time and receiving a reward later

Mediate Generalization
• Arranging for some thing or person to act
as a medium that ensures the transfer of
the target behavior from instructional
setting to the generalization setting
– Contrive a mediating stimulus
– Teach self-management skills

• Contrive a mediating stimulus
– Must be made functional for the target
behavior during instruction
– Must be transported easily to the

• Teach self-management skills

Train to Generalize
• Reinforce response variability
• Instruct the learner to generalize


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Chapter 28:

Generalization and Maintenance

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

Cooper, Heron, and Heward Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc.

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