Training and maintaining a retarded child's proper eating.
Keep a small reward after each correct response or the child will slide back to the old way.
01Research in Context
What this study did
One young learners boy with severe intellectual disability ate only with his hands.
The team used hand-over-hand guidance to teach spoon use.
They then added a quick praise-and-token routine after every correct bite.
Finally they removed and later re-added the praise to see if the skill stayed.
What they found
Spoon use jumped from a large share to a large share when praise and tokens were given.
When they stopped the praise, the boy went back to using his hands.
Bring the praise back and the spoon returned to a large share.
The skill only stuck while the brief reward stayed in place.
How this fits with other research
Schneider et al. (1967) and Fantino (1968) showed that careful prompting and fading can teach new skills fast.
This study adds the next step: after you teach the skill, keep tiny rewards coming or it fades away.
Kim et al. (2023) later found the same rule in reading: tighter mastery plus brief rewards keeps words learned.
Bennett et al. (1973) used the same prompting style for following instructions, but saw little carry-over once rewards stopped—matching the eating result.
Why it matters
You can teach any daily living skill with good prompting, but don’t walk away.
Leave a micro-reinforcer—one token, one “nice job,” one bite of dessert—right after the correct response.
That tiny payoff is the glue that keeps the new skill in place.
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Join Free →After the learner scoops with the spoon, immediately give one verbal praise and one edible bite—keep this pair in place for at least two weeks.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
The present study was designed to explore whether motivational procedures are needed to maintain a retardate's continued use of previously trained eating skills. A profoundly retarded child who ate food with her hands was trained by a manual guidance procedure to eat properly with a spoon, but the child still did not use the spoon after having learned to do so. When a motivational-maintenance procedure was applied, the child did begin to eat properly. When maintenance was discontinued, the child returned to eating with her hands. Proper eating returned when maintenance was applied again; when discontinued, the child returned to eating with her hands. These results demonstrate that continued motivational procedures are needed after training to maintain the retardate's continued use of proper eating skills.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1972 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1972.5-67