Association for Behavior Analysis International

Prompting and error correction are two common components of discrete trial teaching. Given their documented effectiveness, clinicians may have difficulty selecting which prompting or error correction procedure to select under varying conditions. This symposium includes two studies which compared different prompting or error correction procedures to teach language skills for individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. These comparisons may help to identify the conditions under which different approaches may be more effective or preferred. Practical implications and future research will be discussed. The discussant will provide further considerations on how this research can be used in clinical settings and what is needed in future research.

Any persons involved in comprehensive behavioral intervention for individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.

This study compared simultaneous prompting to an error correction procedure for teaching three children with Autism Spectrum Disorder expressive labels. Using a parallel treatment design nested into a multiple probe design, each participant was taught how to expressively label six pictures of sports teams or cartoon characters with the simultaneous prompting procedure and six pictures of another different sports teams or cartoon characters with the error correction. The goal was to evaluate the effectiveness, efficiency, and acquisition during teaching for each participant across the two conditions. Results indicated that both teaching procedures were effective, with high rates of maintenance, and all participants responded correctly during the majority of teaching trials.

Many prompting systems have been evaluated to effectively and efficiently teach individuals to read sight words. Comparative studies on prompting systems provide information about the strengths and weaknesses of different prompting systems. Information gathered from comparative studies can be beneficial when selecting a prompting system that may work best for each learner. This study compared the relative effectiveness and efficiency of least-to-most prompting and flexible prompt fading to teach sight words for three children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. An adapted alternating treatment design was used to compare the two prompting systems. Practical implications and future research will be discussed.