Comparison of prompting procedures to teach internet skills to older adults

Three adults learned to email, FaceTime, and find YouTube clips on an iPad. The trainer switched each day between two ways to teach: short how-to videos or plain written steps.

They used an alternating-treatments design. Each skill was taught until the person could do it alone three times in a row. The team counted how many teaching trials each person needed to reach that goal.

Both video prompts and text prompts worked. Every learner mastered all three tablet tasks. No one gave up or needed extra help.

Speed was personal. One learner hit mastery fastest with videos. Another learned quickest with text. The third showed no clear winner. The authors say: track each client, then pick the faster format.

Chock et al. (1983) already showed that older adults can learn new skills when teaching is behavioral. Pachis et al. now give the next step: choose the prompt style that saves trials for that person.

Allison (1976) used the same alternating-treatments trick in a classroom. The design works the same way forty years later, just swapped from kids and tokens to seniors and iPads.

Krentz et al. (2016) used tokens to boost walking for adults with ID. Both studies remind us that basic ABA tools—prompts, tokens, data—work across ages and goals.

If you teach older clients any tech skill, run a quick five-trial probe with video and five with text. Tally correct responses. The probe tells you which format will reach mastery first, saving you and the client time. No extra prep is needed—just split your task analysis into slides or short clips and let the data choose.