nfirmation, the behavior is reinforced and consolidated in order to prevent wearing away of the behavioral practice brought about thus far by persuasive communication. The behavioral act thus becomes incorporated into the cognitive framework, i.e. the normal way of doing things.
             The adoption of behavior is influenced by different types of perception, by the "radicality" of the innovation and also by individual characteristics such as education or income. Valente also categorizes individuals within a community according to the time (sequential stage) of their adoption of the new behavior: innovators, early adopters, the early majority, the late majority and the followers (Valente, p.35). The diffusion curve shows that in the beginning of a campaign, the number of people adopting the new behavior is small but increases rapidly until it reaches approximately half of the population, and then slows down as few "non-adopters" are left.
             Finally, he shows that the spread of knowledge, positive attitude and practice of the behavior varies in time. Awareness spreads rapidly, faster than attitude and practice, indicating a time lag between knowledge and practice. Aldo he shows how the change in behavior is faster when promoted by a media campaign as opposed to word-of-mouth communication (Valente, p.38).
             Valente mentions three limitations to the use of diffusion theory.
             The first limitation concerns the fact that the promotion of a particular behavior does not occur from the very beginning of a campaign but rather later when a number of people have adopted the behavior and the
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