We used an adapted alternating treatments design to compare the effects of traditional and embedded discrete trial teaching (DTT) with adults with autism. Traditional DTT consisted of the instructor presenting a discriminative stimulus to start each trial ("Point to___"), implementing a prompt (i.e., manual guidance), and providing…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may have difficulty acquiring intraverbal behavior. The present study compared manipulations of stimulus salience (i.e., volume increase, elongation) to teach intraverbals (e.g., "You drink [juice]" and "You drink from [cup]") to three participants diagnosed with ASD whose…

One of the most fundamental strategies in mathematics instruction is practice problems because teachers know that practicing a skill improves performance. At the same time, teachers also know that just because students can correctly answer practice problems does not mean they fully understand the concept or how to apply a formula--especially not…

Previous research has demonstrated that the conditional-only method (starting with a multiple-stimulus array) is more efficient than the simple-conditional method (progressive incorporation of more stimuli into the array) for teaching receptive labeling to children with autism spectrum disorders (Grow, Carr, Kodak, Jostad, & Kisamore, 2011).…

Prior research indicates that the relative effectiveness of different error-correction procedures may be idiosyncratic across learners, suggesting the potential benefit of an individualized assessment prior to teaching. In this study, we evaluated the reliability and utility of a rapid error-correction assessment to identify the least intrusive,…

Children with autism may struggle in developing conditional discrimination repertoires. Saunders and Spradlin (1989, 1990, 1993) arranged "blocked" teaching trials in which they presented the same sample stimulus repeatedly across trials (in lieu of randomly alternating targets across trials) and then faded the number of trials in each block. We…

This investigation evaluated the use of conditional discrimination (CD) instruction and multiple exemplar instruction (MEI) to establish derived relational responding in accordance with hierarchical frames with school aged children. The first experiment used a multiple probe design to evaluate the effectiveness of MEI to teach participants to…

In recent years, operant discrimination training procedures have been used to teach giant African pouched rats to detect tuberculosis (TB) in human sputum samples. This article summarizes how the rats are trained and used operationally, as well as their performance in studies published to date. Available data suggest that pouched rats, which can…

This study compared no-no prompting procedures to simultaneous prompting procedures for 3 children with autism. Using a parallel treatments design, researchers taught rote math skills, receptive labels, or answers to "wh-" questions with both prompting systems. Results indicated that no-no prompting was effective in teaching all skills. By…

Early and intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) is an approach to treating the behavioral deficits and excesses observed in children with autism spectrum disorders. The magnitude of improvement in the overall functioning of children receiving EIBI has stimulated additional research and widespread clinical dissemination through the publication…

Learning styles in capuchin monkeys were assessed with a computerized reversal-learning task called the mediational paradigm. First, monkeys were trained to respond with 90% accuracy on a two-choice discrimination (A+B-). Then the authors examined differences in performance on three different types of reversal trials (A-B+, A-C+, B+C-), each of…

The steps involved in teaching multiple discrimination to disabled students are listed for ecological, performance, functional, and stimulus analyses. Additional considerations, including stimulus modification and design of the instructional sequence (successive or cumulative approaches), are reviewed. (CL)

People who wish to help others must learn to discriminate among the various moods of those they wish to assist. (CK)

Errorless learning refers to a variety of discrimination learning techniques that eliminate or minimize responding to incorrect choices. This article describes experimental roots of errorless learning and applied errorless strategies. Specifically, previous research on stimulus fading, stimulus shaping, response prevention, delayed prompting,…

A report on research which investigates the effectiveness of a reinforcement program which would require an increased amount of desirable behavior for each unit of reinforcement. (Author)