Every skill in a learner's program sits in one of two places: it is still being learned, or it has already been learned and now needs to stick. The procedures you use in each phase look different on purpose. This lesson shows you how to tell them apart and why it matters for the way you run a session.
Why it matters
Teaching a skill is only half the job. A child who could name 20 animals in March but cannot name any in June has lost something the team worked hard to build. Maintenance procedures protect that investment. At the same time, if you run a brand-new target the way you run a mastered one, with few prompts and sparse reinforcement, the learner may make lots of errors and lose motivation.
Your learner's skill acquisition plan tells you which targets are in acquisition and which are in maintenance. Knowing the difference helps you follow the plan as written, notice when a mastered skill is slipping, and report it to your supervisor. Practice items often ask which phase a target is in, which procedure fits that phase, or what to do when a maintenance target drops.
Key ideas
- Acquisition means building a new skill. The learner cannot yet perform the skill independently and accurately. Teaching is frequent and structured.
- Maintenance means keeping a learned skill. The learner already met the mastery criterion. The goal now is for the skill to keep occurring over time, even after some or all of the teaching procedures are gone.
- Mastery is the bridge. Your supervisor sets a mastery criterion, such as a certain percentage correct across several sessions. When a target meets it, the plan usually moves it from acquisition to maintenance.
- Reinforcement gets thinner. Acquisition often uses dense or continuous reinforcement. Maintenance shifts toward intermittent reinforcement and, ideally, the natural reinforcers the skill earns in daily life. Intermittent schedules also tend to make behavior more persistent.
- Prompts fade out. Acquisition targets often include planned prompts and prompt fading. Maintenance targets are usually run independently, with the plan's error correction if a mistake happens. On a probe, the learner's first, unprompted answer is the one you score; an answer given after a model is prompted, not independent.
- Practice and data become less frequent. Acquisition targets are usually run and recorded every session. Maintenance targets are often probed on a set schedule, such as once a week.
- Mixing helps. Many plans intersperse mastered targets among acquisition trials. The learner gets practice on old skills plus easy chances to earn reinforcement between harder trials.
Definitions
- Acquisition procedure: teaching steps used to build a skill the learner cannot yet perform independently, such as prompting, prompt fading, many practice opportunities, and dense reinforcement.
- Maintenance (response maintenance): how well a learner keeps performing a behavior once some or all of the teaching that built it has been removed.
- Maintenance procedure: planned steps that keep a mastered skill strong, such as periodic probes, thinned reinforcement, and interspersing mastered targets with new ones.
- Mastery criterion: the performance standard, set by the supervisor, that shows a target has been learned.
- Interspersal: mixing trials of mastered tasks in with trials of new or harder tasks.
Examples from a session
One learner, two phases
- Acquisition at the clinic: Amara, age 5, is learning to label colors. "Purple" is a new target. Her RBT uses the planned prompt, fades it across trials, gives a token after every correct response, and records data on every trial.
- Maintenance at the clinic: "Red" met criterion last month. The RBT now asks Amara to label red a few times a week, mixed in with purple trials, and gives praise on some correct answers rather than all of them.
- Maintenance at home: Malik, age 14, mastered making a simple lunch. Once a week his RBT checks whether he still completes every step independently, while his family's thanks and a meal he enjoys serve as natural reinforcers.
If Amara's "red" probes suddenly drop below criterion, the RBT does not skip the target or switch to reteaching on her own, unless the plan already spells out what to do. She records the data accurately and tells her supervisor, who may move "red" back into acquisition.
Non-example: an RBT mixes mastered "clap" trials into a session on the new target "touch nose," prompting and giving a token after each correct "touch nose." Mastered trials are mixed in, but the target being taught is still in acquisition. Interspersal alone does not make a procedure maintenance.
Common mistakes / exam traps
- Dropping mastered targets completely. A skill that is never practiced or reinforced again can weaken. Maintenance is a planned phase, not a finish line.
- Confusing maintenance with generalization. Maintenance is about time: does the skill last after teaching ends? Generalization is about new conditions: does the skill show up with new people, places, or materials? (Textbooks such as Cooper, Heron, and Heward group both under "generalized behavior change," but for this task, tell them apart this way.)
- Helping during a probe. Adding prompts during a maintenance probe to "get the score up" hides real performance and gives your supervisor bad data.
- Changing phases on your own. Moving a target between acquisition and maintenance is your supervisor's decision. Your job is to run the plan and report what you see.
Exam trap
The trap: calling a target "maintenance" because it is old, easy, or mixed in with mastered trials. What decides the phase is whether the target has met the mastery criterion. The procedure follows: planned prompts, reinforcement after every correct response, and data every session mean acquisition; no prompts before the response, thinned reinforcement, and probes on a schedule mean maintenance. Running a new target the maintenance way invites errors and frustration.
Exam trap
If a question describes a skill checked weeks after teaching ended, in the same setting with the same materials, the answer is maintenance, not generalization. Look for "over time" versus "new conditions."
Quick check
Which session plan describes a maintenance procedure?