Instructing university students to conduct discrete-trials teaching with confederates simulating children with Autism

Abstract

An essential component of applied behavior analysis programs for teaching children with autism is discrete trials teaching. Experiment 1 investigated the effectiveness of a self-instructional manual for teaching university students to correctly apply discrete-trials teaching to teach three tasks to confederates role-playing children with autism. Experiment 2 investigated a training package consisting of the selfinstructional manual combined with accurate scoring of a videotape of an experienced tutor conducting discrete-trials teaching with a confederate role-playing a child with autism. The results suggest that self-instructional strategies have considerable potential for instructing participants to conduct discrete-trials teaching.