JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS 2014, 47, 246–263 NUMBER 2 (SUMMER)

AN EVALUATION OF THE GENERALIZATION AND MAINTENANCE

OF FUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION AND SELF-CONTROL SKILLS
WITH PRESCHOOLERS
KEVIN C. LUCZYNSKI
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA MEDICAL CENTER’S MUNROE-MEYER INSTITUTE

GREGORY P. HANLEY
WESTERN NEW ENGLAND UNIVERSITY

AND

NICOLE M. RODRIGUEZ
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA MEDICAL CENTER’S MUNROE-MEYER INSTITUTE

The preschool life skills (PLS) program (Hanley, Heal, Tiger, & Ingvarsson, 2007; Luczynski &
Hanley, 2013) involves teaching social skills as a means of decreasing and preventing problem
behavior. However, achieving durable outcomes as children transition across educational settings
depend on the generalization and long-term maintenance of those skills. The purpose of this study
was to evaluate procedures for promoting generalization and long-term maintenance of functional
communication and self-control skills for 6 preschool children. When the children’s social skills
decreased across repeated observations during a generalization assessment, we incorporated
modifications to the teaching procedures. However, the effects of the modifications were variable
across skills and children. Satisfactory generalization was observed only after the teacher was
informed of the target skills and teaching strategies. Maintenance of most social skills was observed
3 months after teaching was discontinued. We discuss the importance of improving child and
teacher behavior to promote generalization and maintenance of important social skills.
Key words: delay tolerance, early child care, functional communication, generalization,
maintenance, mand, preschool life skills, prevention, problem behavior, requesting, self-control,
social skills

The National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development study of early child care
(2003) identified a positive correlation between
the total amount of time children spent in
nonmaternal child care from birth to kindergar-
ten and the frequency of problem behavior such
as aggression and disobedience (based on teacher
and caregiver reports). A follow-up study showed
Portions of this study were conducted in partial
fulfillment of a PhD in behavior analysis from Western
New England University by the first author. We thank Jason
C. Bourret, Amanda M. Karsten, and Rachel H. Thompson
for their feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript.
Address correspondence to Kevin C. Luczynski, Munroe-
Meyer Institute, 985450 Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha,
Nebraska 68198 (e-mail: kevin.luczynski@unmc.edu).
doi: 10.1002/jaba.128
that the increased level of reported problem
behavior for these children persisted through
sixth grade (Belsky et al., 2007), suggesting
extended negative outcomes if effective inter-
ventions are not developed. Although all the
factors that account for the increased likelihood
of problem behavior have not been identified, the
limited availability of teacher attention, teacher
assistance, and classroom materials may establish
the value of these events and evoke responses that
have previously produced access to these re-
inforcers (Michael, 1993). Of concern is that the
most effective responses may take the form of
problem behavior such as hitting, grabbing, and
yelling, thereby increasing the likelihood that this
behavior will occur in the future (Ingvarsson,
Hanley, & Welter, 2009; Luczynski &

246
 FUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION AND SELF-CONTROL
Hanley, 2013; McKerchar & Thompson, 2004;
Reimers et al., 1993).
Given the potential for problem behavior in
preschools and the importance of early interven-
tion, Hanley, Heal, Tiger, and Ingvarsson (2007)
designed the preschool life skills (PLS) curricu-
lum, which established classwide procedures to
help children develop 13 important social skills in
four key areas (instruction following, functional
communication, delay tolerance, and friendship
skills). The selection of skills was informed by (a)
the functional communication training literature
on skills that are typically taught to decrease
problem behavior (e.g., Durand & Carr, 1991;
Fisher et al., 1993; Hanley, Iwata, & Thompson,
2001; Piazza et al., 1997) and (b) the school-
readiness literature on the types of skills that
kindergarten teachers believe to be important for
young children to exhibit (e.g., Lin, Lawrence,
& Gorrell, 2003; Rimm-Kaufman, Pianta, &
Cox, 2000).
The PLS program involves arranging events,
referred to as evocative situations, that frequently
lead to problem behavior (e.g., momentary
unavailability of teacher attention, teacher assis-
tance, and preferred materials) and capitalizing
on these situations by teaching social skills that
serve as functional replacements for problem
behavior. The functional communication skills
include teaching children to request access to
events commonly shown to maintain problem
behavior (e.g., adult attention, adult assistance,
and preferred materials). For example, children
were taught to say “May I have the glue, please?”
to obtain glue and “Will you help me, please?”
to obtain assistance opening the glue. These
requests served as functionally equivalent alter-
natives to problem behavior, such as forcefully
grabbing the glue or screaming about the
difficulty of opening the glue. Next, children
were taught to say “okay” and wait patiently for
30 s to 1 min when reinforcers were delayed.
Learning to tolerate delays after the acquisition of
communication responses likely benefits both
child and teacher because the requested events are
247
not always immediately available in a busy
preschool classroom, and these waiting periods
often evoke excessive requesting (Tiger &
Hanley, 2004) or problem behavior (Hanley
et al., 2007). In two separate evaluations of the
program, a four-fold and five-fold increase in the
target skills and a 70% and 53% reduction in
problem behavior were observed with children
who attended a university-based (Hanley et al.,
1997) and community-based (Hanley, Fahmie,
& Heal, in press) preschool, respectively.
Despite these positive outcomes, Hanley
et al. (2007) noted that some children did not
acquire the functional communication and delay-
tolerance skills and, for some children who
acquired the skills, not all skills were maintained
during follow-up observations. This outcome is
problematic because acquisition and mainte-
nance of social skills are likely related to decreases
in existing problem behavior and prevention of
the development of more severe forms of problem
behavior over time. Another limitation was that
Hanley et al. did not compare the effects of the
PLS program with a separate group of children
who did not experience the curriculum. Thus,
the question remained as to whether the target
skills would have eventually developed from
additional exposure to educational opportunities
at school, maturation processes assumed to be
associated with physiological developments
(Garon, Bryson, & Smith, 2008), or a combina-
tion of social interaction and maturation.
To address these limitations, Luczynski and
Hanley (2013) expanded the complexity and
number of skills in the functional communica-
tion and delay-tolerance units of the PLS and
modified features of the teaching format to
increase the likelihood that all children would
acquire and maintain the skills. First, precursor
responses were taught as one means of increasing
maintenance of the target vocal requests (Beau-
lieu, Hanley, & Roberson, 2012). Specifically,
children were taught to stop, look at the teacher,
and raise a hand before or during a target vocal
request (e.g., “excuse me”). Second, the class of
248 KEVIN C. LUCZYNSKI et al.
appropriate responses was expanded by teaching
children three (instead of one) functionally
equivalent vocal requests to access teacher
attention (“excuse me,” “pardon me,” and the
teacher’s name) and two framed requests to access
materials (“May I have the [item]?” and “Will you
give me the [item]?”) and assistance (“May I have
your help?” and “Will you help me?”). Third,
children were taught how to tolerate delays to and
denials of materials and assistance. Fourth,
acquisition of these skills was determined using
performance-based criteria instead of the time-
based criteria used by Hanley et al. (2007). Fifth,
teaching occurred in a small-group format, rather
than a classwide format, with a subset of children
whom their classroom teachers had nominated as
most likely to benefit from improved social skills.
The use of performance-based criteria within a
small-group format afforded flexibility in the
amount of teaching provided for each child and
allowed multiple learning opportunities to be
arranged within a relatively brief period. Last, the
relative advantages of experiencing the teaching
procedures in addition to the typical preschool
curriculum were evaluated by arranging a
matched control group of children who did not
experience the PLS program. The teaching
enhancements were successful. All six children
in the treatment group acquired and maintained
all of the skills, and problem behavior was nearly
eliminated. By contrast, the six children in the
control group showed no skill acquisition, and
their problem behavior worsened over the same
period.
Complete acquisition and short-term mainte-
nance of the social skills, as shown in Luczynski
and Hanley (2013), are necessary, but not
sufficient, to develop a prevention curriculum.
Before larger scaled, randomized evaluations of
the PLS program are conducted, it seems prudent
to identify the extent to which acquired skills
generalize to new classrooms and teachers, and
whether they continue to occur across extended
periods of time (e.g., summer break). If they do
not, it is important to examine the factors that
might produce better generalization and
maintenance.
Skinner (1953) noted that generalization is not
a process that simply occurs after teaching but is
the product of thoughtful programming during
teaching. Stokes and Baer (1977) described a
technology to promote stimulus generalization,
which can be described as the occurrence of
behavior under stimulus conditions that are not
present during training. Stokes and Osnes (1989)
later defined 12 specific tactics to promote
generalization in three categories: (a) Make use
of current functional contingencies by selecting
responses that would likely recruit natural
consequences and by modifying consequences
so that reinforcement is provided for newly
acquired responses and withheld for nontarget
responses, (b) teach diversely by using many
exemplars of stimuli and responses and by
making programmed antecedents and conse-
quences less discriminable during teaching, and
(c) incorporate functional mediators by including
common physical and social stimuli during
teaching and by teaching self-mediated physical
and verbal responses.
The PLS program described by Hanley et al.
(2007) incorporated several of the tactics
described above to promote stimulus generaliza-
tion: (a) Responses that were likely to recruit
natural reinforcing consequences from teachers
were selected (“excuse me,” “Will you help me,
please?,” and “May I have the [item], please?”);
(b) teaching was carried out by multiple adults
and peers, across the entire school day, and during
multiple activities to increase the diversity of
stimulus exemplars; and (c) physical (classroom
materials) and social (peers) stimuli were incor-
porated into teaching situations. These tactics
may have increased the likelihood of observing
generalization of the target skills, but their effects
remain unknown because generalization assess-
ments were not conducted.
In addition to incorporating generalization
tactics similar to those arranged in Hanley et al.
(2007), Luczynski and Hanley (2013) included
 FUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION AND SELF-CONTROL
several additional tactics. With respect to the
establishment of a functional communication
repertoire, precursor responses and multiple vocal
requests were taught. Moreover, the communi-
cation and self-control skills were taught across
more than 100 different art, manipulative, and
craft materials. The self-control skills also were
taught following a variety of teacher cues that
signaled delayed and denied access to these
reinforcers (e.g., “wait, please” and “This item is
not available”). Finally, teaching in a context with
several classroom peers and activity-based mate-
rials allowed common social and physical stimuli
from the children’s preschool classroom (and
likely future classrooms) to be arranged.
Luczynski and Hanley (2013) conducted a
systematic replication of the acquisition and
short-term maintenance of the functional com-
munication and self-control skills taught by
Hanley et al. (2007). By extension, one purpose
of the current study was to evaluate the extent to
which tactics that were programmed during the
children’s acquisition of the social skills would
promote generalization of the skills to activities
that were conducted by unfamiliar teachers in
unfamiliar classrooms and maintenance of the
skills over a 3-month period. A second purpose
was to evaluate the degree to which informing
teachers of the instructional procedures and
target social skills would affect generalization and
maintenance outcomes.
METHOD
Participants
Six children participated in this study, all of
whom were members of the test group in
Luczynski and Hanley’s (2013) evaluation.
Because these children had recently acquired
the target skills, their participation in the current
study provided an opportunity to assess proce-
dures to promote generalization and maintenance
of these skills. Seven days elapsed between
the children’s participation in Luczynski and
Hanley’s study and the current study.
249
Participants were six typically developing
children from two different-aged classrooms
who attended an inclusive, nonprofit preschool
that served low-income families. The lead
teachers were given a questionnaire in which
they were asked to list the children in their
classroom for whom they had concerns regarding
problem behavior and who could benefit from
acquiring the social skills we were targeting. Next,
they were asked to rank the children in order from
most concerning to least concerning. At the
beginning of this study, the mean age of the three
older children in Classroom A was 5.0 years
(range, 4.9 years to 5.1 years); the mean age of
the three younger children in Classroom B was
3.9 years (range, 3.7 years to 4.2 years).
Setting and Materials
Teaching sessions conducted by the experi-
menter took place in a corner area of the
children’s classrooms. Generalization and main-
tenance sessions conducted by the teachers
occurred in the corner area of each teacher’s
classroom. The area in each classroom was 3 m by
2 m and contained child-sized chairs and a table
typically used for small-group activities. The
experimenters provided the materials used in all
activities, which included a variety of craft (e.g.,
collages, Popsicle stick houses, cotton ball snow-
men), manipulative (e.g., Playdoh, Lincoln
Logs), and fine-motor (e.g., glitter glue, markers)
materials.
Dependent Measures and Interobserver Agreement
The dependent measures were identical to
those reported in Luczynski and Hanley (2013)
and included social skills and problem behaviors
(see Table 1 for definitions). During each session,
two evocative situations were arranged to test for
each of the target social skills (i.e., appropriate
requesting, waiting for requests, and accepting
denials of requests). For one type of evocative
situation, activity-related items were presented on
the table but out of the children’s reach, which
established the value of access to attention,
250 KEVIN C. LUCZYNSKI et al.

Table 1
Operational Definitions of Targeted Social Skills and Problem Behavior

Dependent measures Operational definition

Skill 1: requests for attention
Stopping (precursor behavior)
Looking (precursor behavior)
Hand raise (precursor behavior)
Vocal requests
Waiting for teacher attention
Skill 2: framed requests for
materials and assistance
Vocal framed requests
Skill 3: delay and denial tolerance
Delay and denial acknowledgment
Waiting
Mediating responsea
Problem behavior
a
The response taught during the informed teaching condition. Most of the text is reprinted from Luczynski and Hanley
(2013) because the same dependent measures were used.
Hands not engaging with activity-related material prior to or simultaneously with a target vocal
request.
Head and eyes directed toward teacher prior to or simultaneously with a target vocal request.
Hand raised equal to or above head prior to or simultaneously with a target vocal request.
Saying, “excuse me,” “pardon me,” or teacher’s name using appropriate tone, volume, and
tempo.
The absence of additional requests for attention until a non-vocal response (e.g., teacher turns
toward child), vocal response (e.g., teacher says “yes”), or both responses occur.
Saying “May I have the [item]?” or “Will you give me the [item]?” using appropriate tone,
volume, and tempo to access material on the table. Saying “May I have your help?” or “Will
you help me?” to access assistance from the teacher.
Saying “okay” using appropriate tone, volume, and tempo following a teacher’s signal.
The absence of additional requests and problem behavior with or without returning to engage
with activity-related materials.
Saying “When I wait quietly, I get what I want” following the request for attention and framed
requests for materials and assistance skills and then returning to the activity after three
repetitions.
Hitting, pinching, grabbing, slapping, scratching, throwing things toward the teacher within 6
inches, yelling or screaming, and rudeness to access teacher attention, teacher assistance and
materials, and following delays to and denials of those events.

assistance, and materials. For another type of
evocative situation, delays to and denials of
materials and assistance were arranged. Each
evocative situation represented one trial during
which observers scored the occurrence of the
social skills or problem behavior. Only indepen-
dent occurrences of the target skills were scored
and reported. If problem behavior and a social
skill occurred during the same trial, only problem
behavior was scored. Therefore, these categories
were mutually exclusive for each evocative
situation. The proportion of trials for each
evocative situation in which the target social skill
and problem behavior occurred were depicted
graphically. Because the experimenters and data
collectors were associated with skill acquisition,
they were not present during any generalization
and maintenance sessions. We used a hard-drive
camcorder on a tripod to record generalization
and maintenance sessions and scored children’s
performance from these recordings at a later
time.
A second, independent data collector scored
target responses during 42% of teaching sessions,
33% of generalization sessions, 32% of the
maintenance sessions. An agreement was defined
as scoring the same response across all measure-
ment categories during each evocative situation
(i.e., trial-by-trial agreement). Interobserver agree-
ment was calculated by dividing the number of
agreements by the number of agreements plus
disagreements and converting the result to a
percentage across all children’s performance within
a session. Mean agreements across trials averaged
85% (session range, 65% to 100%) for Skill
1, 90% (session range, 56% to 100%) for Skill 2,
84% (session range, 70% to 100%) for Skill 3,
and 90% (session range, 71% to 100%) for
problem behavior. With the exception of seven
sessions, the agreement measures were above 80%.
 FUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION AND SELF-CONTROL
Procedure
Teaching. The evocative situations and teach-
ing procedures replicated those described during
the Teach Skill 3 condition in Luczynski and
Hanley (2013), in which the experimenter taught
three social skills to the children in a small-group
format. Activity-related items were periodically
presented near the middle of the table, just out of
the children’s reach. Item presentations typically
continued until each child emitted a response to
access attention and materials or assistance on
eight occasions. Sessions that ended with fewer
than eight trials for a child occurred when three
presentations of different items occurred during a
1-min period and the statement, “Please remem-
ber that you should use all materials to complete
the activity,” did not evoke additional responses.
The presentation of materials served as an
evocative situation (hereafter described as trials)
for attention because it was necessary to obtain a
teacher’s attention to gain access to materials or
assistance. During two of the eight trials, delivery
of the item or assistance was delayed, and in
another two trials, delivery of either event was
denied; for the remaining four trials, materials or
assistance was delivered immediately. The order
for the types of trials in each session was
randomized. In a given activity, each child’s
behavior was observed during eight evocative
trials for attention, eight evocative trials for
assistance or materials, two trials in which the
reinforcer was delayed, and two trials in which the
reinforcer was denied (i.e., 20 total trials).
During a trial, descriptive praise was provided
if the child emitted a correct skill. Following an
incorrect skill, the experimenter described,
modeled, or role-played the skill or used any
combination of these strategies, with an emphasis
on the skill components executed in error. If
another incorrect response occurred during a
role-play, the experimenter used gentle hand-
over-hand guidance, additional vocal prompts
(e.g., “Say, ‘excuse me’ ”), or both until a correct
response was emitted. After the prompted skill
was emitted, descriptive praise and the reinforcer
251
were provided. When every child exhibited the
skills on 85% or more of the trials across three
nonconsecutive sessions, the teaching condition
was discontinued.
Generalization (preinformed teaching). Five
teachers from the child care center conducted
activities with the children during the generaliza-
tion assessments. Three teachers rotated across
sessions for each group of children. Two teachers
conducted sessions exclusively with the children
from Classroom A, another two teachers con-
ducted sessions exclusively with the children from
Classroom B, and a fifth teacher conducted
sessions with both groups of children. The
teachers had an extensive history as lead teachers
in the child care center (M ¼ 16 years; range, 5 to
22), and their experience varied with respect to
the age of the children they supervised (M ¼ 5.2
years old; range, 3.5 to 6.5). Generalization
teachers had not previously supervised or taught
the children in this study, which removed the
possibility that the children’s performance could
be influenced by a prior history of interaction
with the generalization teachers.
On the days on which generalization sessions
were conducted, the experimenter and data
collectors associated with teaching were not
seen by the children so that any stimulus control
exerted by their presence would not influence the
children’s performance. A minimum of 24 hr
separated all generalization sessions. Children
never experienced the same teacher and activity in
consecutive sessions; the teachers and materials
rotated in a counterbalanced manner across
sessions.
Before each session, the experimenter de-
scribed the activity (e.g., making snowmen) and
showed the available materials (e.g., glitter glue,
cotton balls, and buttons) to the teacher and
answered any questions. The teacher was asked to
conduct the activity in a way that was most
comfortable to her and to interact with the
children as she typically did during group-based
activities in her own classroom, with two
exceptions: the teacher was asked (a) to present
252 KEVIN C. LUCZYNSKI et al.
materials on the table in front of her rather than
distribute them to each child at the beginning of
an activity and (b) to delay and deny the delivery
of several items to each child throughout the
activity. Two guidelines for concluding an activity
also were provided: (a) The activity should last
between 15 min and 45 min, and (b) each child
should be allowed to create an activity-related
product. In contrast to sessions during the
teaching condition conducted by the experi-
menter, the evocative situations were not
arranged systematically, which resulted in a
varying number of trials for each child across
sessions. It is important to note that the teachers
were not told about the social skills and the
teaching procedures, and they were not told to
provide any particular prompts or differential
consequences for the children’s responses.
Informed teaching. The children returned to
the location where the experimenter conducted
activities, and modifications were made to the
arrangement of evocative situations and aspects of
the teaching procedures based on observations of
generalization (preinformed teaching) sessions.
Specifically, an experimenter observed recorded
sessions and took notes on the teachers’ and
children’s behavior to identify differences be-
tween the teacher’s behavior during generaliza-
tion sessions and the experimenter’s behavior
during the previous teaching condition. The
experimenter observed differences in (a) how the
materials were presented throughout activities;
(b) the occurrence of unsignaled delays and
denials after correct requests for attention,
materials, and assistance; and (c) the form of
cues used to signal a delay to and denial of
materials and assistance. A comparison of the
observations and corresponding modifications to
the teaching procedures is shown in Table 2.
Generalization teachers presented several sim-
ilar and dissimilar items at a time (e.g., several
tubes of finger paint, foam stamps, and water-
colors) and sometimes presented all the items for
an activity at once in the middle of the table.
These formats produced evocative situations that
were markedly different from the formats
arranged by the experimenter during previous
teaching conditions, which involved presenta-
tions of one or two similar items at a time (e.g.,
one or two tubes of finger paint). To address this
discrepancy and prepare the children to respond
effectively under these situations, three presenta-
tion formats alternated in a counterbalanced
order across sessions, which, in a given session,
involved the presentation of one or two items
periodically, several (three or more) similar and
dissimilar items periodically, or all the items at
once.
When the children correctly exhibited requests
for attention, materials, and assistance, the
generalization teachers occasionally did not
respond (unsignaled denial) or responded to
the child after a delay (approximately 5 s to 30 s;
unsignaled delay). By contrast, during previous
teaching conditions, the experimenter immedi-
ately (a) attended to the child or provided the
materials or assistance or (b) provided a delay or
denial cue. Two teaching modifications were
introduced, and an additional response was
taught to the children to prepare them for the
intermittent occurrence of unsignaled delays and
denials in the generalization tests. Contingencies
were arranged so that a minimum of 5 s elapsed
without any change in the experimenter’s
behavior following a correct skill; these un-
signaled delays varied from 5 s to 30 s. After one
occurrence of a correct response for teacher
attention and a correct response for access to
materials or assistance per activity, an unsignaled
denial was programmed. It should be noted that
signaled delay and denial trials were still
programmed for two trials per session. We also
taught the children a mediating response (three
repetitions of the vocal utterance, “When I wait
quietly, I get what I want,” and then return to the
activity) to facilitate tolerance during unsignaled
delays and denials (a similar response was taught
by Hanley et al., 2007). In sessions that followed
acquisition of the mediating response, the
experimenter prompted the children to repeat
 FUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION AND SELF-CONTROL
Table 2
Comparison of the Differences in Procedures During Teaching and Informed Teaching
Teaching
Type of item presentations
One or two similar items
Consequences following correct requests
Short latencies ( 2 s) to attention, materials,
and assistance
Short latencies ( 2 s) to delay and denial cues
Cues for delaying and denying materials and assistance
Clear vocal cues for signaling delays and denials
Clear nonvocal cues for signaling delays and denials
Eye contact when delivering cues
the vocal response at a progressively lower volume
until the response was no longer audible.
The vocal and nonvocal cues used by
generalization teachers differed notably from
those used by the experimenter during previous
teaching conditions. The cues used by teachers to
signal delays and denials took the form of (a)
vague vocal cues such as “I don’t know,” “We’ll
see,” “Give me a moment,” and “Let me think
about it”; and (b) vague nonvocal cues such as
shaking their heads and waving their hands. In
addition, both types of cues were occasionally
delivered without looking at the child. Although
the children had learned how to respond to
several different vocal cues correctly, including
“in a little bit,” “wait, please,” “It’s not available,”
and “no,” these cues remained consistent and
were delivered while the experimenter looked
at the child. To address these discrepancies, the
experimenter interspersed clear as well as vague
vocal and nonvocal cues that were similar to the
forms used by teachers during the initial
generalization assessment. When every child
exhibited the skills on 85% or more of the trials
across five nonconsecutive sessions, the teaching
condition was discontinued.
Generalization (postinformed teaching). The
procedures were the same as described for
generalization (preinformed teaching), except
253
Informed teaching
One or two similar items
Several (three or more) similar and dissimilar items
All items
Minimum latency of 5 s to attention, materials, and assistance
and delay and denial cues
Longer latency (5 s to 45 s) to delay and denial cues
One unsignaled trial of withholding of attention and material
or assistance (extinction)
Taught a mediating response
Interspersed clear and vague vocal cues for delays and denials
Interspersed clear and vague nonvocal cues for delays and denials
Interspersed cues with and without eye contact
that this assessment took place after completion
of the informed teaching condition. The same
five teachers participated. This assessment was
used to evaluate whether the teaching modifica-
tions would improve generalization outcomes.
Generalization plus teaching. A sixth, new,
unfamiliar teacher conducted the activities
during this assessment and subsequent assess-
ments. The classroom areas, types of materials,
and general guidelines for conducting activities
were the same as in the two previous generaliza-
tion assessments. The difference was that an
experimenter gave the teacher details regarding
the children’s target skills and teaching proce-
dures. The experimenter explained the proce-
dures and modeled behaviors using the following
script:
We taught children how to request a
teacher’s attention by stopping what they
are doing [experimenter modeled his mo-
tionless hand on the table], looking at the
teacher [experimenter modeled directing his
head and eyes toward the teacher], raising
their hands at or above head level [experi-
menter modeled both responses], saying
“excuse me,” “pardon me,” or the teacher’s
name, and then waiting for the teacher to
respond by remaining silent [experimenter
modeled a vocal response and correct
254 KEVIN C. LUCZYNSKI et al.
waiting]. After they gained a teacher’s
attention, they learned to say “May I have
the [item]?” and “Will you give me the
[item]?” to request activity-related material
and to say “May I have your help?” and “Will
you help me?” to request assistance. A correct
request for attention, materials, and assis-
tance should occur without problem behav-
ior such as grabbing, hitting, yelling, or
rudeness. When materials and assistance
were delayed and denied during an activity
by a teacher, they learned to say “okay” and
return to the activity without engaging in
additional requests.
If a child does not exhibit the correct
skills at any point throughout the
activity, please prompt the child to
engage in the skill by saying, for
instance, “When you want a teacher’s
attention, make sure you look at them
with your eyes”; you may model the
correct response by turning your head
and looking at the child, and you may
role-play the skill by saying, “Let’s
practice, when you want a teacher’s
attention, stop what you are doing, raise
your hand, look at the teacher, say
‘excuse me,’ ‘pardon me,’ or my name
and wait quietly,” followed by the child
practicing the skill with you. When a
child correctly requests your attention,
materials for the activity, your assistance,
or appropriately responds when materi-
als are delayed or denied, please provide
descriptive praise such as, “Nice job
stopping, looking, raising your hand,
saying ‘excuse me,’ and waiting silently.”
Use of the teaching strategies is flexible
such that you could use them singly,
collectively, or in a combination as you
see appropriate. Let’s practice the teach-
ing strategies for each skill.
After role-playing the teaching strategies for
each skill (which took approximately 5 min), the
teacher was asked if she had any questions.
Feedback on implementation of the teaching
tactics was provided once before the second
session after an experimenter informally observed
the first session from the recorded video. The
feedback from the experimenter took approxi-
mately 5 min and included reminders that (a) the
children were taught how to wait for a response
from the teacher following a request for attention,
(b) when role playing with the children, it is
important to reenact the situation in which
the error occurred, and (c) the materials can be
presented in a way that is most natural to the
teacher, but the distance of the materials from
each child should be approximately the same.
Long-term maintenance. Our maintenance
assessment determined the extent to which the
social skills and problem behavior occurred
3 months after the generalization assessment
was completed. The teacher who participated in
the generalization plus teaching assessment also
conducted activities in this assessment. However,
the teacher was asked not to implement the
teaching procedures and, instead, provide atten-
tion, assistance, and materials contingent on any
response (i.e., problem behavior, the target skills,
or some other form) that occurred during the
evocative situations. This was done to assess
maintenance of the social skills in the extended
absence of the teaching procedures. If a target
skill occurred, the teacher was asked to provide
descriptive praise. The contingencies matched
those arranged in the preteaching baseline and
short-term maintenance assessments in Luczyn-
ski and Hanley (2013).
During the 3-month period before this
maintenance assessment, the teachers in the
children’s classrooms were not informed of the
teaching procedures and target social skills;
therefore, it is unlikely that the children
experienced the teaching procedures during this
period. One child from each classroom (Joy and
Tex) could not participate in this assessment
because they transferred to a different school.
Maintenance plus teaching. After the long-
term maintenance assessment, the experimenter
 FUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION AND SELF-CONTROL
provided the same instructions to the teacher as
described in generalization plus teaching. Feed-
back after the first session was not provided
because, based on informal observations from
the recorded video, implementation of the
teaching strategies was accurate. This condition
was conducted to determine how rapidly the
children’s use of the social skills could be
reestablished when the teaching procedures
were reimplemented.
Design
A reversal design between generalization
assessments and teaching conditions was used
to evaluate within-subject control over changes in
children’s performance. A multiple baseline
design across classrooms was used to determine
the effect of the procedures that were arranged
during generalization plus teaching and mainte-
nance plus teaching on children’s performance.
RESULTS
The performances of similarly ranked children
in Classrooms A and B are depicted as pairs in
Figures 1, 2, and 3 (i.e., pairs of first-, second-,
and third-ranked children), with each skill
depicted in a separate panel. The pair of children
in Figure 1 exhibited high levels of all the social
skills during the initial teaching condition.
Generalization (preinformed teaching) was then
conducted, during which a decrease to near 50%
was quickly observed for requests for attention
(Skill 1; top row for each child) and delay and
denial tolerance (Skill 3; bottom row for each
child). A decreasing trend also was evident after
several sessions for framed requests for materials
and assistance (Skill 2; middle row for each child).
We observed low levels of Skills 1 and 3, as well as
a slightly higher level (but decreasing trend) of
Skill 2, across the last two sessions of this
assessment. These response patterns were similar
for the other children (Figures 2 and 3),
with the exception of Len, who maintained
moderate to high levels of Skills 1 and 2
255
throughout the generalization (preinformed
teaching) assessment.
During informed teaching, all six children
exhibited the skills at variable but high levels,
indicating that they learned to engage in the skills
under more challenging teaching conditions.
During generalization (postinformed teaching),
we observed immediate decreases in Skill 1 for
Iggy, Tex, Joy, and Brit (Figures 1 and 2);
however, we observed elevated but variable
responding with Abe and Len (Figure 3). Taken
together, the data represent a slight improvement
in generalization with two children for Skill 1.
Marked improvements in generalization for Skill
2 were evident for Iggy, Joy, and Abe compared to
generalization (preinformed teaching), in that
their requests were near or above 80% across the
later sessions of this phase. Len showed the same
high level of Skill 2 as in the first generalization
assessment; however, Tex and Brit did not show a
similar degree of improvement for Skill 2. All
children exhibited low or highly variable levels of
Skill 3 in the second generalization assessment. In
summary, modest improvements in generaliza-
tion were observed for Skills 1 and 2 with several
children during the generalization assessment
that followed informed teaching.
During generalization plus teaching, each
child’s performance improved. Four of the six
children exhibited Skill 1 in nearly 85% of trials
across sessions. Iggy and Tex showed improve-
ment but to a lesser degree, with Skill 1 occurring
in approximately 50% of trials across sessions. All
children exhibited Skills 2 and 3 at moderate to
high levels across the last two or three sessions.
During the maintenance assessment, three of
the four children engaged in Skill 1 for more than
50% of the trials, which was similar to or slightly
lower than their performance during generaliza-
tion plus teaching; however, the fourth child
(Iggy) rarely engaged in Skill 1. Three of the four
children exhibited robust levels of Skill 2 (on
nearly 85% of the trials); Brit, however, rarely
exhibited the skill. Similarly, three of the four
children exhibited high, albeit initially variable,
256 KEVIN C. LUCZYNSKI et al.

Figure 1. Percentage of trials with target skills (filled circles, primary axis) and number of trials per session (bars,
secondary axis) for Iggy and Tex. Rank refers to the lead teacher’s ranking of children in their classroom that could most
benefit from acquiring the target skills. Brackets denote whether a teacher or experimenter conducted the sessions.

levels of Skill 3; only Abe exhibited the skill at a
low level. Taken together, all four children
exhibited moderate to high levels of at least
two of the three skills, indicating partial skill
maintenance after 3 months without teaching.
When teaching was reintroduced during mainte-
nance plus teaching, we observed high levels of
the skills for all children.
Guidelines for the number of trials conducted
for each skill were intentionally more flexible
during sessions conducted by teachers than those
conducted by the experimenter. To minimize the
complexity of sessions, teachers were asked to end
an activity after approximately 15 to 45 min had
elapsed and the children had created a product.
For this reason, the number of trials (observa-
tions) for each skill was usually greater during the
sessions conducted by teachers than those
conducted by experimenters (Figures 1, 2,
and 3; open bars, secondary y axis). Children’s
 FUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION AND SELF-CONTROL 257

Figure 2. Percentage of trials with target skills (filled circles, primary axis) and number of trials per session (bars,
secondary axis) for Joy and Brit. Rank refers to the lead teacher’s ranking of children in her classroom who could most benefit
from acquiring the target skills. Brackets denote whether a teacher or experimenter conducted the sessions.

performance did not appear to vary systematically
based on the number of trials in each condition.
Thus, it seems unlikely that the increase in the
number of trials affected the children’s perfor-
mance during those assessments.
Figure 4 depicts the means of the children’s
social skills and problem behavior across the last
three sessions of all generalization and mainte-
nance assessments. The data depicted for the
short-term maintenance assessment (first col-
umn) are of the performances from Luczynski
and Hanley (2013); these data are shown here to
serve as a comparison for changes in the children’s
performance during the generalization and long-
term maintenance assessments conducted in the
current study (second through sixth columns).
During the short-term maintenance assessment,
the children exhibited the social skills on an
average of 91% (range, 84% to 100%) of the
trials, and no problem behaviors occurred.
258 KEVIN C. LUCZYNSKI et al.

Figure 3. Percentage of trials with target skills (filled circles, primary axis) and number of trials per session (bars,
secondary axis) for Abe and Len. Rank refers to the lead teacher’s ranking of children in her classroom who could most benefit
from acquiring the target skills. Brackets denote whether a teacher or experimenter conducted the sessions.

Performance decreased during generalization
(preinformed teaching), with the skills occurring
on 24% of the trials (range, 2% to 57%). When
engagement in social skills decreased, the levels of
problem behavior increased. During the general-
ization (postinformed teaching) assessment, the
level of combined skills remained lower
(M ¼ 50%; range, 17% to 82%) than that
observed during the short-term maintenance
assessment but represented an improvement over
the level observed in the first generalization
assessment. We also observed a slight decrease in
the level of problem behavior (M ¼ 16.5%;
range, 0% to 50%).
In generalization plus teaching, the children
exhibited the skills on 81% of the trials (range,
71% to 91%), and problem behavior was nearly
eliminated for five of six children. The average
level of problem behavior (M ¼ 4.2%; range, 0%
to 20%) was similar to that observed during the
 FUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION AND SELF-CONTROL 259

Figure 4. The mean percentage of trials with the three target skills combined (top row; gray bars) and with problem
behavior (bottom row; black bars) during the last three sessions of maintenance and generalization assessments are depicted.
Each child’s performance is denoted by an open circle. The experimenter and teacher labels denote who conducted the
activities across the conditions. The children’s performances during the short-term maintenance assessment (first column) are
from Luczynski and Hanley (2013) and are shown here for comparison.

short-term maintenance assessment. After
3 months without teaching, the social skills
occurred on 59% (range, 46% to 87%) of the
trials during the long-term maintenance assess-
ment, and problem behavior remained low across
all children (M ¼ 7.8%; range, 0% to 12%).
When teaching was in place, all skills occurred
above 80% (range, 72% to 90%), and problem
behavior was further reduced (M ¼ 4%; range,
0% to 11%).
DISCUSSION
The evaluations in the current study extend
previous research (Hanley et al., 2007, in press;
Luczynski & Hanley, 2013) by providing
preliminary results that the PLS program
promotes stimulus generalization of acquired
functional communication and self-control skills
across unfamiliar teachers and classrooms. Al-
though moderate to high levels of generalization
were observed in the first two sessions for almost
all children during the initial generalization
assessment, the effects were fleeting, and de-
creases in the skills were associated with increased
levels of problem behavior. Furthermore, satis-
factory improvements were not observed in
the second generalization test, despite the fact
that over 20 additional teaching sessions were
conducted in which antecedents and consequen-
ces during teaching were made less discriminable
and a mediating skill for delay tolerance was
taught. The lack of sustained generalization is a
notable concern, because robust effects are
required for the PLS program to ultimately
prevent the development of problem behavior
when children transition across educational
settings.
Satisfactory levels of generalization were
achieved only after a teacher was informed of
the target skills and teaching procedures (gener-
alization plus teaching). This outcome highlights
the importance of arranging reinforcement for
the social skills and extinction for problem
behavior in educational environments, at least
during the initial skill transfer. These modifica-
tions to the generalization contexts can be
260 KEVIN C. LUCZYNSKI et al.
characterized by Stokes and Osnes’s (1989)
tactics of modifying maladaptive consequences
and reinforcing occurrences of generalization.
We did not initially include teacher training
because we were interested in the extent to which
teaching children appropriate nonvocal (stop
what they are doing, look at the teacher, and raise
their hands) and vocal (saying, “excuse me,”
“pardon me,” or the teacher’s name) communi-
cation and self-control responses would naturally
recruit reinforcing consequences from preschool
and kindergarten teachers. In fact, Stokes and
Baer (1977) and Stokes and Osnes (1989)
recommend teaching culturally relevant skills as
a core generalization tactic, and Lin et al.’s (2003)
research on school readiness found that kinder-
garten teachers, based on their ratings, were
primarily interested in the improvement of
children’s social skills. Moderate to high levels
of the social skills occurred in the first two
sessions, which provided ample opportunity for
the teachers to reinforce these responses. The
gradual decrease in the skills suggests, however,
that the skills did not recruit a sufficient amount
of reinforcement from teachers to maintain the
social skills.
We introduced additional teaching modifica-
tions during informed teaching to promote
stimulus generalization and maintenance that
can be characterized by Stokes and Osnes’s
(1989) generalization category of “train diverse-
ly,”related to Stokes and Baer’s (1977)“train
loosely.” This category is composed of four
generalization tactics, two of which include
teaching in the presence of a sufficient number
of stimulus exemplars (e.g., activity-related
materials) and response exemplars (e.g., teaching
precursors and several request forms) that were
present during the initial teaching conditions
(i.e., teaching). The other two tactics include
making the antecedents and consequences for
target skills less discriminable, for example, by
varying the presentation formats and the experi-
menter’s delay and denial cues (antecedent
manipulations) and by arranging unsignaled
delays and denials following correct skills
(consequence manipulations). The modifications
in informed teaching were made to incorporate
the latter two generalization tactics. However,
despite these additional efforts to prepare the
children to respond effectively in the generaliza-
tion contexts, we again observed notable variabil-
ity in or a gradual decrease of one or two of the
social skills for each child across sessions.
Although stakeholders in Luczynski and Hanley
(2013) rated highly the importance of the social
skills to children’s success in school, our current
analyses suggest that teachers likely need to be
directly instructed about the importance of the
functional communication and self-control skills
and of the interactions that will promote their
maintenance in the classroom.
The arrangement of both generalization
assessments represented a challenging test of
the effects of the teaching procedures in that (a) a
minimum of 24 hr elapsed between sessions; (b)
the generalization teachers were unaware of the
children’s history, particularly with respect to the
target skills and teaching procedures; (c) the
teacher, classroom, and activity materials changed
every session; and (d) the children’s performances
were repeatedly assessed over a 2-week period in
both assessments. In addition, the generalization
sessions were conducted to insure that partic-
ipants had no prior experience with the unfamil-
iar teachers and classrooms. In this way, the
generalization assessments mimicked an educa-
tional transition from preschool to kindergarten.
Given these features, it is notable that elevated
levels of generalization were observed during the
first two sessions of the initial generalization
(preinformed teaching) assessment. In fact, of the
18 opportunities for generalization across chil-
dren (six children multiplied by three skills), a
skill occurred on more than 80% of trials for 12
(67%) of the opportunities in at least one of the
first two sessions. Furthermore, a skill was
observed on at least 40% of trials for 15 (83%)
of the opportunities across both sessions, and this
pattern continued in the third session for nine
 FUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION AND SELF-CONTROL
(50%) of the opportunities. These data indicate
that the PLS program promotes the short-term
occurrence of acquired skills in novel contexts
with teachers who are naive to the target skills and
teaching procedures.
Maintenance of the skills across an extended
period of time, especially one that matches
common educational breaks (e.g., summer
vacation), is also an important measure of the
PLS program’s effects. Hanley et al. (2007) and
Luczynski and Hanley (2013) conducted main-
tenance observations of children’s performances,
but they occurred shortly after teaching was
discontinued. We conducted maintenance ob-
servations after 3 months, and the results were
encouraging. Children exhibited two of three
social skills on more than 50% of trials across four
consecutive sessions and exhibited low to zero
levels of problem behavior. Taken together, the
teaching procedures led to some stimulus
generalization of the social skills across different
teachers and classrooms and sufficient mainte-
nance for two of the three targeted skills over a 3-
month period.
The absence of comprehensive measures of the
teachers’ behavior throughout the assessments is a
limitation. Future researchers should collect
detailed data on teachers’ performances to
determine whether, for example, the lack of
reinforcement for the social skills, reinforcement
of problem behavior, or both contribute to the
unsatisfactory outcomes in generalization assess-
ments. In an analogue analysis of the relative
effects of treatment integrity errors, St. Peter
Pipkin, Vollmer, and Sloman (2009) found
detrimental effects when problem behavior
produced reinforcement (errors of commission)
but not when appropriate behavior went unrein-
forced (errors of omission). Given these findings,
future research should determine whether in-
forming teachers to withhold reinforcement
following problem behavior, rather than have
them implement all of the teaching procedures,
would be sufficient to boost generalization
outcomes. Measurement of a range of potential
261
integrity errors that teachers or caregivers may
exhibit without training and their effect on skill
maintenance, generalization, and the reemer-
gence of problem behavior also would be
informative. Future research should also address
the limitation that we asked a sixth teacher, who
did not participate in the previous assessments, to
conduct the generalization plus teaching, long-
term maintenance, and maintenance plus teach-
ing. We introduced a novel teacher for practical
reasons. The other five teachers had repeatedly
shared their time to conduct multiple activities
that lasted approximately 15 to 45 min each, and
we were attempting to be sensitive to their time
commitments. This decision likely had no effect
on the outcomes because the children exhibited
similar levels of at least two of three social skills in
the first session of the generalization plus teaching
as observed in the previous generalization (post-
informed teaching) assessment. Nevertheless, in
subsequent evaluations, the teachers who con-
duct generalization assessments should also
participate in training.
Given that extinction was not programmed for
problem behavior and the teaching procedures
were absent for both generalization tests as well as
in the 3-month maintenance test, the controlling
variables for the children’s improved performance
in the maintenance test require discussion. In the
long-term maintenance assessment, the teacher
was asked to deliver the reinforcers following the
target skills, problem behavior, or any other
response, and she was aware of the target skills;
the teachers in the generalization assessments
were not informed of how to respond and were
not aware of the social skills. Given that the
teacher in the maintenance assessment also
conducted generalization plus teaching, the
children’s history of experiencing her delivering
differential consequences may have led to their
improved performance because her presence may
have signaled the availability of reinforcement for
the social skills. Taken together, the teacher’s
discriminative control and the contingency for
appropriate behavior likely maintained the
262 KEVIN C. LUCZYNSKI et al.
skills throughout the long-term maintenance
assessment.
Our study suggests that informing teachers of
the skills that children have been taught and the
importance of reinforcing those skills may be
important factors in the generalization and
maintenance of children’s improved social behav-
ior. In addition to training teachers on the target
skills and teaching procedures, peer-mediation
strategies could be evaluated as another compo-
nent to facilitate generalization and maintenance.
Beaulieu, Hanley, and Roberson (2013) used
peer mediation as a tactic to improve the
maintenance of 3- and 4-year-old children’s use
of a precursor skill when they respond to
individual and group instructions in a small-
group format. The precursor skill required that a
child stop playing, look at the teacher, say “yes,”
and wait for an instruction after the teacher says
the child’s name or “everyone.” The peers who
provided feedback were taught to mediate their
peer’s behavior through instruction, modeling,
role-playing, and descriptive praise. Peer media-
tion facilitated maintenance of the precursor skill
after discontinuation of the teaching procedures
and should, therefore, be further evaluated as a
tactic to increase generalization and maintenance
effects with the skills that were targeted in the
current study. Exploration of the role of
observational learning (i.e., the child observes
the delivery of attention, materials, or assistance
following a peer’s use of the social skills or
problem behavior) on children’s responding
during small groups may be useful, because this
learning process may account for some of the
unexpected response patterns in the current
study. For instance, a notable increase in requests
for materials and assistance was observed for after
the first two sessions during the generalization
(postinformed teaching) assessment, which may
have been due, in part, to her observation of Iggy
and Abe engaging in this skill and accessing
reinforcement for doing so. Finally, research
should be conducted on the effects of teaching
parents to implement portions of the PLS
program at home on the acquisition, generaliza-
tion, and maintenance of these social skills.
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Received June 19, 2012
Final acceptance February 6, 2014
Action Editor, Jennifer Austin