MATCHING TRAINING PROCEDURES TO OUTCOMES - A BEHAVIORAL AND QUANTITATIVE-ANALYSIS

To analyze the effects of matching the prompting procedure used in tra ining to the specific behavior chain to be taught, 3 students with mil d to moderate retardation were taught four independent tasks: making a bagged lunch, playing a matching game with a peer, ordering food at a restaurant, and participating in a social conversation. Following bas eline, all 3 students were exposed to one of two types of training pro cedures for each task: a least-to-most prompting procedure or a most-t o-least prompting procedure. The type of training procedure was counte r-balanced across students and tasks, whereas performance on the tasks was evaluated within a combination of a multiple-baseline design acro ss participants and multiple-probe design across tasks. When the metho d of prompting was matched to the naturally occurring discriminative s timulus (S-D) of the training stimulus, it greatly affected acquisitio n and maintenance of the skill in terms of differences in levels and v ariability of performance. The most-to-least method of prompting, the matched method in these cases, was more efficient and effective for ac quisition and generalization of the bagged-lunch and matching-game ski lls. The least-to-most method, the matched method in these cases, was more efficient and effective for social-questions and ordering-food sk ills.