Equating and Assigning Targets in the Adapted Alternating Treatments Design: Review of Special Education Journals

Abstract

The current review examined the prevalence of the adapted alternating treatments design (AATD) across 22 special education journals and methods to equate and assign target sets to experimental conditions in the AATD. Since the seminal description of the design in 1985, a total of 49 articles were published using the AATD across 12 of the reviewed journals. The most prominent methods of equating target sets differed from prior reviews of behavior-analytic journals, likely due to the preponderance of response chains being targeted in special education research using the AATD. The majority of articles describe at least one method for equating target sets, although multiple methods were common. Additional methodological strengths in this literature included methods to reduce potential bias when assigning target sets to experimental conditions and counterbalancing target sets across participants. Considerations for practitioners and researchers when using the AATD are described.

Units of analysis in acquisition‐performance criteria for “mastery”: A systematic replication

“…Thus, the experimenter conducted an internet search to find words of greater difficulty. The assignment of each word was done in a quasirandomized fashion that was identical to the target identification process used in Wong et al (2021) and was based on the best practices of equating targets reported by Cariveau et al (2021). The inclusion criteria for the target sight words included a) four‐syllable words (for Patrick and Katie) and one‐syllable words (for William), b) each four‐syllable word contained 9‐12 letters and each one‐syllable word contained four letters, c) no two words that were phonetically or visually similar were presented in the same instructional session, and d) no two words with the same initial letter were presented in the same instructional session.…”

Experimental control in the adapted alternating treatments design: A review of procedures and outcomes

“…The assignment of unique, but equally difficult, targets across conditions is the defining characteristic of the AATD (Holcombe et al, 1994;Sindelar et al, 1985;Wolery et al, 2018), but also introduces an additional threat to internal validity if targets are not properly equated (Cariveau et al, 2020(Cariveau et al, , 2021. Cariveau et al (2020Cariveau et al ( , 2021 recently reviewed methods to equate and assign targets to conditions in published articles that used the AATD.…”

“…The assignment of unique, but equally difficult, targets across conditions is the defining characteristic of the AATD (Holcombe et al, 1994;Sindelar et al, 1985;Wolery et al, 2018), but also introduces an additional threat to internal validity if targets are not properly equated (Cariveau et al, 2020(Cariveau et al, , 2021. Cariveau et al (2020Cariveau et al ( , 2021 recently reviewed methods to equate and assign targets to conditions in published articles that used the AATD. The systematic and explicit equating of target stimuli, termed logical analysis by Sindelar et al (1985), was described in just over half of the studies in the behavior analytic (Cariveau et al, 2020;55.4%) and special education (Cariveau et al, 2021;65.3%) journals.…”

“…Cariveau et al (2020Cariveau et al ( , 2021 recently reviewed methods to equate and assign targets to conditions in published articles that used the AATD. The systematic and explicit equating of target stimuli, termed logical analysis by Sindelar et al (1985), was described in just over half of the studies in the behavior analytic (Cariveau et al, 2020;55.4%) and special education (Cariveau et al, 2021;65.3%) journals. The findings of Cariveau et al (2020Cariveau et al ( , 2021 suggest that the distinction between the alternating treatments design and the AATD is warranted as researchers less familiar with the AATD may not take adequate steps to control for threats to internal validity that are specific to this design (e.g., equating target sets).…”

“…The systematic and explicit equating of target stimuli, termed logical analysis by Sindelar et al (1985), was described in just over half of the studies in the behavior analytic (Cariveau et al, 2020;55.4%) and special education (Cariveau et al, 2021;65.3%) journals. The findings of Cariveau et al (2020Cariveau et al ( , 2021 suggest that the distinction between the alternating treatments design and the AATD is warranted as researchers less familiar with the AATD may not take adequate steps to control for threats to internal validity that are specific to this design (e.g., equating target sets). Further, because the AATD is typically used to compare rapidity of acquisition across gesting potential threats to internal validity were common.…”