Elsevier

Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Volume 3, Issue 3, July–September 2009, Pages 590-606
Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Review
Instructing individuals to deliver discrete-trials teaching to children with autism spectrum disorders: A review

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2009.01.003Get rights and content

Abstract

Early intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) has been identified as the treatment of choice for children with autism spectrum disorders. A common strategy for conducting EIBI is discrete-trials teaching (DTT). There is a demand for research-based, economical, rapid training techniques to teach tutors and parents of children with autism to conduct DTT. This paper provides a review of research that has focused on teaching individuals how to conduct DTT. Considering the high demand for personnel trained in delivering DTT to children with autism, research in this field is highly warranted.

Section snippets

Inclusion criteria

We used three inclusion criteria for selecting studies to be reviewed. First, the focus of the study had to be an evaluation of the effectiveness of training packages for teaching DTT. Studies that focused just on how the application of DTT changed the behavior of the individuals receiving DTT were excluded (e.g., Downs, Downs, Johansen, & Fossum, 2007; Ferraioli, Hughes, & Smith, 2005; Sigafoos et al., 2006).

Second, the dependent variable in the experiments had to include some measure of the

Summary of the research

Seventeen publications met the inclusion criteria, summarized in Table 1. If a publication contained 2 experiments, each of those is listed as a separate experiment in Table 1 (for a total of 20 experiments). It seemed warranted to address multiple experiments separately because the participants and the procedures for teaching the participants how to conduct DTT were often modified across experiments within a study (e.g., Arco, 1997). By reviewing each experiment individually, important

Discussion

Twenty published experiments were reviewed that have evaluated training procedures for instructing individuals how to conduct DTT. The most common training methods included in the studies were: (a) various forms of instruction (written, verbal, videotaped); (b) demonstration/modeling; (c) feedback from the experimenter (praise and error correction); and (d) role-playing and practice.

There are some limitations in the research are worth noting. First, the descriptions of training procedures were

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