Comparing the effects of massed and distributed practice on skill acquisition for children with autism

Abstract

We replicated and extended the findings of Haq and Kodak (2015) by evaluating the efficiency of massed and distributed practice for teaching tacts and textual and intraverbal behavior to 3 children with autism. Massed practice included all practice opportunities conducted on 1 day during each week, and distributed practice included practice opportunities conducted across several days during the week. The results indicated that distributed practice was more efficient for all participants. Suggested areas for future research and implications for practice are discussed.

A comparison of stimulus set size on tact training for children with autism spectrum disorder

“…Similarly, previous research on massed and distributed practice (Haq & Kodak, ; Haq et al, ) compared the effects of grouping many practice opportunities into one session (referred to as massed practice) versus spacing practice opportunities across days (referred to as distributed practice). The results of those studies showed participants required fewer trials‐ and minutes‐to‐mastery during distributed practice opportunities.…”

“…In comparison, other studies arranged larger stimulus set sizes. For example, Haq et al () taught tacts and textual responses with sets of 10 stimuli to two participants who received special education services in their local school district. Similarly, Yaw et al () conducted training with sets of 15 stimuli for students with ASD or specific learning disabilities.…”

“…The efficiency of training can be evaluated in several ways. Training methods that require fewer sessions to mastery or less instructional time (e.g., lower average minutes‐to‐mastery per stimulus) are considered more efficient than methods requiring more sessions and time (e.g., Carroll, Joachim, St. Peter, & Robinson, ; Haq et al, ). However, the number of exposures to each stimulus that are required to produce acquisition is an important variable to consider when stimuli are presented repeatedly within the same session (e.g., Cariveau, Kodak, & Campbell, ).…”

Effects of stimulus presentation order during auditory–visual conditional discrimination training for children with autism spectrum disorder

“…The trial‐initiation response could be considered an observing response in that it increases the likelihood that the participant will make sensory contact with the first stimulus presented. It should be noted, however, that it is fairly common practice not to require an observing response or differential observing response in applied studies that target auditory–visual conditional discriminations for participants with autism spectrum disorder (e.g., Carey & Bourret, ; Carp et al, ; Delfs et al, ; Dittlinger & Lerman, ; Fisher et al, ; Haq et al, ; McGhan & Lerman, ; Paden & Kodak, ). Moreover, recent applied research did not demonstrate consistently superior auditory–visual conditional discrimination acquisition in a condition that required a differential observing response relative to a condition that did not (Vedora, Barry, & Ward‐Horner, ).…”

Empirical Application of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior to Interventions for Children with Autism: A Review

“…Twelve studies evaluated the effects of antecedent (e.g., repeating vs. not repeating the discriminative stimulus at each prompting step; Humphreys, Polick, Howk, Thaxton, & Ivancic, 2013) or consequence (e.g., token reinforcement vs. natural contingencies; Mason, Davis, & Andrews, 2015) manipulations during intraverbal training, as well as the outcomes of different instructional formats in the acquisition of intraverbal responses (e.g., blocked trials; Haggar, Ingvarsson, & Braun, 2017). Haq et al (2015) compared intraverbal acquisition of massed and distributed trials in three children with ASD. During massed trials, the experimenter conducted all training opportunities 1 day during each week; during distributed trials, the experimenter conducted all training opportunities across several days during the week.…”