ABSTRACT
Nancy had cerebral palsy, and her physician said she would never walk, in spite of her surgery. Traditionally, the people think of a response within a chain as producing an outcome that is a reinforcer for that response and an SD for the next response. The most obvious way to establish a chain is through forward chaining. Philip Wilson and his colleagues used forward chaining to help clients with profound intellectual disabilities acquire a repertoire of family-style dining. Praise and small snacks served to reinforce the performance of the various links, as the clients acquired the total behavioral chain. Unlike the method of forward chaining, with total-task presentation the learner performed each of the 15 links of the chain before starting over again. Backward chaining is the major way of establishing behavioral chains. Usually, behavior analysts deal with behavioral sequences as behavioral chains.
