Applications of within-stimulus errorless learning methods for teaching discrimination skills to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities: A systematic review.

The team looked at 28 papers that used within-stimulus errorless learning with people who have ID or DD.

Most studies used stimulus fading. They asked: does this cut errors while teaching new discriminations?

Across 283 learners, fading and similar errorless tricks usually worked. People learned the new skill with fewer mistakes.

Fantino (1968) and Schneider et al. (1967) already showed fading beats trial-and-error for kids with severe ID. The new review adds 26 more studies and says the same thing fifty years later.

Mosk et al. (1984) found stimulus shaping beats standard prompting on every measure. The review folds that data in, showing error-minimising tactics stay on top.

Neves et al. (2023) stretched the idea to kids with cochlear implants. They paired exclusion trials with fading and also saw near-zero errors, proving the logic travels beyond ID.

If you teach discrimination to anyone with ID, DD, or related delays, start with stimulus fading or shaping, not trial-and-error. The old and new evidence agree: you will save time, keep errors low, and hold learner motivation. Pick the target, break it into small stimulus steps, and move forward only when the learner is right at least 90 percent of the time.