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Comparison of Blocked Versus Mixed Trialing When Teaching Foundational Skills to Early Learners

βœ‡Wiley: Behavioral Interventions: Table of Contents
By: Ciobha A. McKeown， Stephen F. Walker， Kerri P. Peters

ABSTRACT

When teaching discriminations, clinicians may choose to teach one target at a time, repeatedly, until mastery (blocked-trial instruction), or they may choose to teach multiple targets, interspersed, simultaneously (mixed-trial instruction). Historically, it was recommended clinicians use mixed-trial instruction at the onset of teaching as blocked-trial instruction may produce faulty stimulus control. However, a recent study demonstrated that a modified blocked-trial instructional arrangement was more efficient than mixed-trial instruction and block-size fading was unnecessary to maintain discriminated performance in adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The generality of these results to early learners is unknown. This study extended the aforementioned research to early learners diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Using an adapted alternating treatment design, we compared the rate of acquisition with both instructional formats across two foundational early learner skills. Comparable learning across both formats for all four early learners was observed.

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On the Evidence for Interactive Effects During and Following Synthesized Contingency Assessments

βœ‡Wiley: Behavioral Interventions: Table of Contents
By: Liam H. McCabe， Brian D. Greer， Casey Irwin Helvey， Adam M. Briggs

ABSTRACT

Synthesized contingency assessments often arrange multiple stimulus changes (e.g., terminating instructions and providing interactive toy play) to follow problem behavior and to occur response independently across test and control conditions, respectively. A central premise of this approach to functional behavior assessment is that individual contingencies interact when delivered together, producing a reinforcing effect greater than the sum of its parts (i.e., the reinforcing effects of the individual contingencies programmed). Across three studies, we evaluated how often within-participant evaluations from the published literature are consistent with this assumption during (Studies 1 and 2) and following (Study 3) the assessment process. Our results suggest that although such interaction can occur, it appears to do so only in a minority of cases. Implications of these findings for practice are discussed.

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