Mastery Criteria and Maintenance: a Descriptive Analysis of Applied Research Procedures

Behavioral practitioners and researchers often define skill acquisition in terms of meeting specific mastery criteria. Only 2 studies have systematically evaluated the impact of any dimension of mastery criteria on skill maintenance. Recent survey data indicate practitioners often adopt lower criterion levels than are found to reliably produce maintenance. Data regarding the mastery criteria adopted by applied researchers are not currently available. This study provides a descriptive comparison of mastery criteria reported in behavior-analytic research with that utilized by practitioners. Results indicate researchers are more likely to adopt higher levels of accuracy across fewer observations, whereas practitioners are more likely to adopt lower levels of accuracy across more observations. Surprisingly, a large amount of research (a) lacks technological descriptions of the mastery criterion adopted and (b) does not include assessments of maintenance following acquisition. We discuss implications for interpretations within and across research studies.