An assessment of the efficiency of and child preference for forward and backward chaining

Comparative studies of forward and backward chaining have led some to suggest that sensitivity to each teaching procedure may be idiosyncratic across learners and tasks. The purposes of the current study were threefold. First, we assessed differential sensitivity to each chaining procedure within children when presented with multiple learning tasks of similar content but different complexity. Second, we evaluated whether differential sensitivity to a chaining procedure during a brief task predicted differential sensitivity during the teaching of longer tasks. Third, we directly assessed children's preferences for each teaching procedure via a concurrent-chains preference assessment. Learners acquired all target skills introduced under both chaining conditions, but individual children did not consistently learn more efficiently with either procedure. Short-duration tasks were not predictive of performance in tasks of longer duration. Both chaining procedures were preferred over a baseline condition without prompting, but participants did not demonstrate a preference for either procedure.