Maintenance
The extent to which a learner continues to perform a skill over time after the teaching procedures that produced it have been reduced or removed.
Maintenance (or response maintenance) refers to a skill continuing to occur weeks or months after it was mastered and after teaching supports such as frequent reinforcement and prompts have been faded. A child who learned to tie their shoes in spring and still ties them in fall shows maintenance.
The RBT Test Content Outline asks RBTs to distinguish maintenance from acquisition. Acquisition procedures teach new skills, with frequent reinforcement, prompts and many practice opportunities. Maintenance procedures keep mastered skills strong with less support: reinforcement on intermittent schedules, natural reinforcers, occasional practice mixed with new targets, and periodic probes to check that the skill is still there.
A skill is usually moved to maintenance after it meets the mastery criterion. Supervisors set the schedule for maintenance checks, for example weekly, then monthly. If performance drops below a set level, the skill may go back into acquisition teaching.
The RBT runs maintenance trials as written, often mixed among acquisition targets, and records them separately so the supervisor can see whether mastered skills are holding up. Mixing in easy maintenance tasks can also keep reinforcement high during sessions.
Example and non-example
| Example | A client mastered identifying coins two months ago. Once a week, the RBT presents a few coin trials mixed into the session, reinforces correct answers intermittently, and records the results on the maintenance sheet. |
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| Non-example | A client is learning to tie their shoes for the first time, with backward chaining, physical prompts and reinforcement on every step. That is acquisition. |
Don't confuse it with
| Acquisition | Acquisition is learning a new skill with full teaching support; maintenance is keeping a mastered skill over time with reduced support. |
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| Generalization | Generalization is a skill occurring in new conditions; maintenance is a skill continuing over time. |
Test yourself
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Question 1Three months after teaching ended, a client still ties their shoes correctly at the clinic, with the same RBT who taught the skill. Which term best describes this?
Show answer
B: Response maintenance. Response maintenance is the continued performance of a behavior after some or all of the intervention has ended. The setting, person and response are the same, so the change is only across time.
- A: Stimulus generalization would require new people, places or materials.
- C: Response generalization would involve new, untaught forms of the response.
- D: Stimulus discrimination is responding differently to different stimuli, which is not described.
Task C.8 · 40-hour curriculum section E
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Question 2In the common phases of an intervention (baseline, intervention, generalization and maintenance), what does the generalization phase focus on?
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B: Whether the skill occurs with new people, places and materials. The generalization phase extends and tests the skill beyond the teaching conditions, with new people, places and materials, so it is useful in the client's daily life.
- A: Measuring the skill before teaching is baseline.
- C: Checking that the skill continues over time is the focus of maintenance.
- D: Direct teaching to mastery is the intervention phase.
Task C.8 · 40-hour curriculum section E · 40-hour curriculum section A
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Question 3What does "maintenance" mean in a skill program?
Show answer
C: A client keeps performing a learned skill after teaching is reduced or ends. Maintenance (response maintenance) is the continued performance of a skill over time after some or all of the teaching procedures have been withdrawn. Mastered targets are usually moved to maintenance and checked periodically.
- A: Performing a skill with new people or places is generalization.
- B: Learning a new skill with prompts and frequent reinforcement is acquisition.
- D: Measuring a skill before teaching is baseline.
Task C.9 · 40-hour curriculum section A
Answer every question to see your score.
On the RBT exam
This term belongs to task C.9 Maintenance vs. acquisition in content area C, Behavior Acquisition, which is 19 of the 75 scored questions.