ERRORLESS ESTABLISHMENT OF VISUAL DISCRIMINATION USING FADING PROCEDURES.

MOORHEARSKELLEHER et al. (1964) worked with preschool kids who did not have disabilities. The team wanted the children to pick a shape, not a bright spot.

They first made the correct card much brighter. Bit by bit they cut the brightness while keeping the shape the same. The kids kept choosing correctly even after the brightness cue was gone.

Almost every child learned the shape game with almost zero wrong picks. Fading the bright prompt let the shape alone control the child’s choice.

Fields (1978) repeated the same trick with pigeons and got the same clean transfer, showing the rule works across species. Berkowitz (1990) flipped the story with autistic learners: when pictures were the target, fading prompts took more trials and caused more errors than delayed prompting. The kids with autism did better when the teacher waited instead of fading.

Harrison et al. (1975) added a twist: even after errorless training, the birds still treated the non-shape cue as a stop signal, so inhibition can still form. Emmelkamp et al. (1986) later used fading to move control away from harmful restraint tubes to simple wristbands, cutting self-injury in teens with profound ID.

Use brightness fading when you need errorless acquisition of a visual task with young neurotypical clients. If you work with autistic learners, think twice: try delayed prompting first for picture or PECS tasks. Either way, move prompts slowly and measure both errors and problem behavior so you know when to switch tactics.