Behaviormaintaining

Behaviormaintaining, occasionally written as a concatenated label, refers to the persistence of a behavior after the initial training or intervention has ended. It is a central concern in applied behavior analysis and related fields, where the goal is not only to teach a skill but to ensure it continues to occur in real-world environments.

Maintenance is measured by observation after a delay, across settings, or under natural conditions. Factors that influence maintenance include the strength and recency of reinforcement for the behavior, the degree of prompt fading, the development of discriminative stimuli that cue the behavior, and the integration of maintenance strategies into the training program.

Common strategies to promote maintenance include programming common consequences that will be present in the natural environment (e.g., using natural reinforcers), providing intermittent reinforcement schedules, teaching self-management and self-monitoring, fading prompts gradually, and training across multiple settings to support generalization. Data collection through maintenance probes helps assess persistence over time.

Applications include education, clinical behavior analysis, and organizational training. In education, maintenance is linked to durable academic and adaptive behaviors; in clinical contexts, it supports skill retention after therapy; in workplaces, it sustains performance improvements after training programs.

Challenges include context-specific maintenance, relapse when reinforcement contingencies shift, and limited transfer of skills to untrained settings. Ongoing reinforcement, booster sessions, and environmental supports are often recommended to mitigate these issues.