Effects of a motivating operation manipulation on the maintenance of mands.

The team worked with children with autism who already had a few mands.

Before each maintenance probe, the kids either got free access to the reinforcer or got none.

Then the researchers checked how many mands the children still used without prompts.

When kids had no free access first, they kept asking for the item later.

If they got the item for free right before the test, their mands dropped.

Free stuff killed the motivation to ask, so the data looked like the skill was gone.

Valentino et al. (2019) scanned 45 mand studies and saw most teams skip these probes.

O'Reilly et al. (2012) shows why that skip matters: you can get a false negative.

Bowen et al. (2012) tried a different tweak—adding the question "What do you want?"—and saw no change.

Both papers warn small setup choices can hide real skills.

Before you write "mand not maintained," run the probe with zero free reinforcer first.

This one switch keeps you from dropping a program that is actually working.

Add it to your checklist next time you review mand goals.