Play skills taught via behavioral interventions may be maintained in situations without programmed reinforcementfor at
least 2 months and may generalize across settings and toys (response and stimulus generalization). Play in the absence of the
discriminative stimuli associated with the delivery of reinforcement suggests that play taught via behavioral interventions
may come to be automatically reinforced and participants’ parents believe their children are happier, thus meeting
definitions of ‘‘genuine’’ play. For children who do not readily generalize acquired play skills to different settings and toys, lag
schedules of reinforcement may be an effective means to promote generalization, butfuture research involving lag schedules
is required to establish this assertion.