Persons with severe to profound multiple disabilities, such as intellectual, visual, and motor disabilities, may be characterized by low levels of adaptive engagement with the environment. They may also display forms of inappropriate, stereotypical behavior (like hand mouthing, that is, putting their fingers into or over their mouths) or inappropriate postures and dystonic or spastic behavior (for example, tilting their heads forward or stretching their legs). Educational efforts that are directed at these persons need to encompass the dual goal of promoting adaptive responses and reducing inappropriate behavior to improve the persons' overall situation. A form of educational intervention that has recently been put forward to pursue such a dual goal relies on programs involving microswitch clusters. One such cluster could be used, for example, to monitor adaptive object manipulation and eye poking and to ensure that the manipulation responses lead to positive stimulation only if performed in the absence of eye poking. The study reported in this article involves two participants (children), one of whom exhibited an inappropriate behavior that had not been targeted before (dystonic-spastic stretching of one or both arms) and new cluster technology. This technology allowed small manipulations of objects to serve as adaptive responses and to produce positive stimulation and it interrupted any ongoing stimulation if one or both of the participant's hands were withdrawn from the objects for two seconds or more. Basically, the technology did not monitor the inappropriate behavior per se--dystonic-spastic stretching of one or both arms or hand mouthing--but a precursor of it (hand withdrawal) via relatively noninvasive devices. (Contains 2 figures.)