Strategies and tactics for promoting generalization and maintenance of young children's social behavior.

Brown et al. (1994) wrote a how-to guide instead of running an experiment.

They sorted dozens of older studies into a grocery list of tactics that help preschoolers use new social skills with new people, toys, and places.

The goal was to give teachers and clinicians a clear menu: pick these tactics, plug them into your lessons, and generalization happens on purpose, not by luck.

The paper does not give new numbers.

It simply says: if you want sharing, greeting, or turn-taking to stick, build in three things from day one—train with many examples, use real play situations, and let natural rewards (like getting a toy back) do the work.

These ideas come straight from Stokes & Osnes, but the authors show how each one looks in a preschool room.

Chandler et al. (1992) looked at the same pile of studies two years earlier and complained that most papers forgot to measure generalization at all.

Brown et al. (1994) take the next step and tell you exactly how to fix that gap—so the two reviews read like before-and-after chapters of the same manual.

McMillan et al. (1997) later tested the tactics with deaf preschoolers: social skills only spread to new teachers and toys after the team added multiple-exemplar training, proving the 1994 recipe works when you follow it fully.

Huberty et al. (2021) renames the recipe “general case programming” and updates the wording, but the core moves—train loosely, program common stimuli, use natural mediators—are the same ones H et al. listed in 1994.

Stop hoping preschool clients will “just figure it out.” Slide one or two generalization tactics into every social lesson from the first trial. Swap peers, swap toys, and let the child’s own success be the reward. You will waste fewer sessions and see sharing and greeting spread to the sandbox, the bus line, and home.