Modification of staff behavior: A brief note

Abstract

During the course of a behavior-modification demonstration project with severely retarded hospital residents, the technicians involved learned successfully to control resident movements from one room to another by the use of nonaversive behavior-modification methods rather than by pulling and tugging behavior. However, by day 74 of the project, the same technicians had failed to generalize the responses learned during the ten 10-min trials spread throughout each working day to the control of the resident movement behaviors in the intervals between trials. When a "tow-trucking" poster was introduced but unexplained, the behavior learned in the demonstration project began to be emitted throughout the day and the staff were soon using the alternative method 100% of the time.