Establishing reports of saying and doing and discriminations of say-do relations.
Near-errorless prompting with separate ‘say’ and ‘do’ cards quickly teaches kids to accurately recall and match their past promises and actions.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Carmen and colleagues worked with three children who had developmental delays.
The team wanted the kids to learn say-do correspondence. That means the child first says what they will do, then does it, and later tells you if they did it.
They used near-errorless training. First the teacher showed two picture cards. One card matched the promise the child just made. The other card did not. The teacher pointed to the correct card and asked, "Did you do this?" The prompt was slowly taken away.
What they found
All three children learned to pick the correct card even when new pictures were used.
They could wait several minutes and still report accurately whether they had kept their promise.
How this fits with other research
Durand et al. (1990) already showed that constant time delay beats the system of least prompts for sight words. Carmen adds a new twist: use near-errorless prompts for self-report, not just teacher-led tasks.
Gorgan et al. (2019) later found that no single fix for prompt dependence works for every child. Carmen’s tight prompt fading gives one clear tool to try first.
Conine et al. (2020) used tangible rewards to teach response-to-name in fewer trials. Carmen used praise and tokens too, but the goal was self-monitoring, not listener skills. Together they show prompt fading plus strong reinforcers speeds learning across very different skills.
Why it matters
If you need a client to tell you the truth about their own behavior, this method is worth a shot. Set up two cards: one that matches the promise, one that does not. Start with an obvious point prompt and fade it. You may get accurate self-reports in one short session.
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Join Free →Place two picture cards on the table after the child completes a promised action, point to the one that matches the promise, and ask, "Did you do this?" Fade the point over trials.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
The purpose of the present study was to investigate a new procedure for establishing accurate discriminations of delayed acts of saying, of doing and discriminations of say-do correspondence and non-correspondence with three developmentally delayed subjects. A corrective feedback procedure for incorrect discrimination responses, that involved multiple-exemplars, was initially employed, but failed to establish most of the target discriminations for all three subjects. A near-errorless training intervention was subsequently employed that also involved multiple-exemplars. This training used two referents (one for acts of saying and another one for acts of doing) as prompts to produce accurate delayed reports of what they promise to do presently, and accurate delayed reports of what they did. Prompts were also used to indicate whether the say-do relations were the 'same' in terms of correspondence or not the same in terms of non-correspondence. Prompts were subsequently eliminated. All three subjects demonstrated highly accurate reports of delayed saying, doing and say-do correspondence or non-correspondence discriminations in the absence of prompts and with novel stimuli. The results are discussed in terms of generalized classes of behavior. The implications of these findings for the use of the errorless learning paradigm as a means of establishing complex behavior are also discussed.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2002 · doi:10.1016/s0891-4222(02)00142-7