Have Behavior Analysts Maintained and Increased their use of Generalization and Maintenance Strategies?

Baer, Wolf, and Risley (1968) stated that applied behavior analysis should strive to be capable of producing generalized outcomes. Since then, behavior analysts have encouraged research in generalization and maintenance of the behavior changes we create and categorized the generalization promoting strategies used in the literature most frequently (e.g., Stokes & Baer, 1977; Stokes & Osnes, 1989). The purpose of this paper was to extend previous reviews of the generalization and maintenance literature (i.e.,Osnes & Lieblein, 2003; Osnes, 2007) in order to determine the current procedures being used to determine when generalization and maintenance has occurred. In addition, behavior intervention studies that assessed generalization or maintenance were analyzed to determine which generalization promoting strategies the authors used and whether these procedures were responsible for producing the generalized responding found in the study. Results are discussed in terms of comparison between the results of the current review and previous reviews (i.e., Osnes & Lieblein, 2003; Osnes, 2007) and a call is made for studies that are designed to investigate the effectiveness of procedures used to produce generalization and maintenance.