Maintaining performance of autistic clients in community settings with delayed contingencies.

Aman et al. (1987) worked with three autistic clients in a community workshop.

They built a four-step plan to keep good behavior going after staff walked away.

First, staff stayed close and praised often. Next, they moved farther and praised less. Then they left for short stretches. Last, they returned only now and then with a delayed thank-you.

The team tracked each client’s work output across the fading steps.

All three clients kept working hard even when staff were gone most of the day.

Praise given once every thirty minutes was enough to hold the gains.

The behavior stayed high for weeks with only these rare, delayed check-ins.

El-Boghdedy et al. (2023) later tested the same idea with teens. They faded adults and thinned rewards on purpose. The teens stayed on-task just as well, showing the 1987 recipe still works when you plan the thinning step.

Jessel et al. (2017) used momentary DRO instead of simple praise. Both studies got the same result—kids stayed on-task with fewer adult eyes—so the method you pick can flex.

MShawler et al. (2021) used a resetting DRO to keep masks on autistic kids. Like G et al., they proved you can maintain tough behaviors without standing right there.

You can leave the lunch table, the job site, or the classroom and still keep gains alive. Start with dense praise, then space it out. Once the client hits steady performance, try a thirty-minute check-in. One quick “nice working” can save hours of later retraining.