If a learner is no longer advancing during shaping, the instructor should proceed to the next successive response approximation to ensure reinforcement contact.

• A. True
• B. Sometimes
• C. False
• D. Not sure

Answer: (C)

Shaping relies on reinforcing successive approximations toward the target behavior. When progress stalls, you don’t automatically move to the next approximation. Instead, focus on maintaining reinforcement contact for the current step and using strategies to re-establish advancement. This means strengthening the reinforcement for the current emitted behavior, providing additional prompts or cues, reducing task demands if needed, or briefly returning to a previously mastered step to rebuild momentum. Only after the current approximation is consistently emitted and reinforced should you progress to the next step. So the statement is false.