DISCRETE-TRIALS TEACHING 

DTT is one of the procedures that behavior analysts use to teach someone. During a teaching trial in DTT, the teacher presents the antecedent(s), waits for – or helps – the student to respond, and then provides an immediate consequence. The teacher repeats these steps many times in fairly rapid succession during a teaching session. One important characteristic of this procedure is that the opportunity for the student to respond depends on the teacher’s presentation of the antecedent(s). Thus, with this procedure, the rate at which a student can respond depends on the rate at which the teacher presents antecedents. Children with autism participating in an intensive ABA training program commonly receive several hours of DTT per day. However, you should know that ABA treatment for autism is not limited to DTT. For example:

* Incidental Teaching

* Incidental Teaching

PROMPTING TO ENSURE A CORRECT RESPONSE

If a child is unable to respond correctly to antecedents, the teacher might initially provide some assistance to help the child do so. The assistance provided to increase the likelihood that a correct response will occur is referred to as a prompt. Prompts are essentially supplemental S^Ds. There are different types of prompts, and they can be used individually or in combinations. After a child has learned to respond to prompts, the prompts are gradually faded out. We will describe how to do so in a later chapter.

 GRADUATED GUIDANCE

(@ ABA Blog)

MOST-TO-LEAST PROMPT FADING

A
 common
 strategy
 for
 gradually
 removing
 prompts
 is
 to
 begin
 with
 whatever
 prompt
 is
 necessary
 to
 evoke
 a
 correct
 response,
 and
 then,
 across
 trials,
 gradually
 remove
 that
 prompt.
 This
 method
 of 
removing
 prompts 
is 
called
 Most‐to‐Least 
fading. 
It 
is 
also 
sometimes 
referred 
to
as
the
 Decreasing
 Assistance 
method.
 

In
 most‐to‐least
 prompt
 fading
 the
 fading
 steps
 are
 often
 pre‐determined
 and
 criteria
 are
 often
 pre‐established
 for
 how
 many
 times
 each
 step
 is
 to
 be
 presented
 before
 progressing
 to
 the
 next
step.
We 
will 
give 
examples 
of 
such 
criteria 
in 
later 
chapters.


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