Inserting mastered targets during error correction when teaching skills to children with autism

Research has identified a variety of effective approaches for responding to errors during discrete-trial training. In one commonly used method, the therapist delivers a prompt contingent on the occurrence of an incorrect response and then re-presents the trial so that the learner has an opportunity to perform the correct response independently. Some authors recommend inserting trials with previously mastered targets between the prompted response and opportunities to respond independently, but no studies have directly examined the benefits of this approach. In this study, we manipulated the placement of trials with mastered targets during discrete-trial training to compare the effectiveness of error correction with and without this recommended insertion procedure. Four children with autism participated, and each was taught 18 targets across 3 target sets. Results indicated that embedding trials with mastered targets into error correction may not confer benefits for most children and that doing so may lead to less efficient instruction.