Social reinforcement and the naturally occurring social responses of severely and profoundly retarded adolescents.

This study was designed to determine if the deficits in social behavior of retarded persons might be due, in part, to the failure of their environment to maintain that behavior. Using an ABAB design, we systematically ignored severely and profoundly retarded, institutionalized adolescents and gave them social reinforcement for appropriate social behavior. Social behavior decreased during nonreinforcement conditions and increased during reinforcement conditions. The data suggest that deficits in social behavior of retarded persons may be due to failure of their environment to maintain such behavior. Implications of these findings for staff behavior and the utility of the present procedure for increasing social behavior of institutionalized retarded persons were discussed.