Distribution of follow-up sessions influences determinations of skill maintenance

Maintenance refers to the persistence of behavior change over time after some or all instruction has been discontinued. The distribution of follow-up sessions can affect the frequency of practice opportunities in the absence of ongoing instruction and determinations of maintenance based on how often performance is assessed. An adapted alternating-treatments design was used to evaluate the frequency and schedule of follow-up session distribution on the maintenance of an arbitrary labeling task taught to nine college-aged students. Following acquisition, the participants completed virtual follow-up sessions across at least 30 days. The follow-up session distributions were equally effective with respect to maintenance for six participants. The progressively increasing distribution was associated with higher maintenance for two participants, and the equal distribution was associated with higher maintenance for one participant. Across all participants, some distribution of opportunities to practice the skill was associated with higher levels of maintenance relative to the control.