The effect of varying teacher presentation rates on responding during discrete trial training for two children with autism.
Cut the pause to one second during DTT and you get more responses and less problem behavior with no loss in accuracy.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Two children with autism took part in discrete-trial teaching.
The teacher tried two speeds: one-second between demands and a slower pace.
An alternating-treatments design flipped the speeds across small blocks so each child felt both every day.
Problem behavior, correct answers, and total responses were counted for each block.
What they found
The fast one-second pace cut problem behavior for both kids.
Children also answered more often, giving the teacher extra teaching chances.
Accuracy stayed the same, so faster did not mean sloppier.
How this fits with other research
McKearney (1976) saw the same thing decades ago in a first-grade classroom: brisk teacher talk lowered off-task behavior and lifted correct answers.
That earlier study used a reversal ABAB style, while Fahmie et al. (2013) used alternating treatments in DTT, so the designs differ but the message matches.
Downs et al. (2008) showed that feedback can push instructor accuracy above 90%, yet student learning gains were small; Fahmie et al. (2013) also found no accuracy loss, suggesting speed tweaks and feedback tweaks target different levers.
Shin et al. (2021) and Cruz et al. (2023) prove that BST and supervision lift adult fidelity; Fahmie et al. (2013) shows a simple timing change can help the child even when fidelity is already steady.
Why it matters
You can run more trials with fewer problems simply by trimming the pause between instructions.
Next time you do DTT, set a one-second silent count after each response before the next demand.
Watch problem behavior drop and opportunities rise without hurting correct answers.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Recent research has emphasized the importance of manipulating antecedent variables to reduce interfering behaviors when teaching persons with autism. Few studies have focused on the effects of the rate of teacher-presented instructional demands as an independent variable. In this study, an alternating treatment design was used to evaluate the effects of varied rates of teacher-presented demands (1 s, 5 s, 10 s) on the occurrence of problem behavior, opportunities to respond, responses emitted, accuracy of responding, and magnitude and rate of reinforcement for two children with autism. Results indicated that fast presentation rate (1 s) resulted in lower rates of problem behavior, higher frequencies of instructional demands, higher frequencies of participant responding, and greater magnitudes and rates of reinforcement. Differential effects on accuracy of responding across conditions were not observed. Implications for manipulating the rate of teacher-presented instructional demands as an antecedent variable to reduce problem behavior are discussed.
Behavior modification, 2013 · doi:10.1177/0145445512463046