The effects of intertrial interval and instructional format on skill acquisition and maintenance for children with autism spectrum disorders
Use 2-second pauses and mixed trials to make tacts and intraverbals stick faster.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Cariveau and team compared four ways to run discrete-trial teaching.
They varied the gap between trials (2 s vs 5 s) and the trial order (same question block after block, or mixed questions).
Kids with autism got short teaching bursts on naming items and answering questions.
What they found
The 2-second gap with mixed questions won.
Kids reached mastery faster and kept the skills later.
Same-length gaps in blocked drills helped less.
How this fits with other research
Sanford et al. (1980) showed the same thing 36 years earlier: shorter gaps speed learning.
Cariveau adds the twist that mixing trial types matters too, so the old rule now has a partner rule.
Cox et al. (2015) looks like a clash—short gaps made rats and pigeons pick tiny, quick rewards.
The animal study used choice tasks, not skill teaching, so the “impulsive” effect doesn’t apply here.
Why it matters
You can shave minutes off each program by cutting the pause to two seconds and shuffling your questions.
No extra cost, no new materials—just faster mastery and better maintenance.
Try it in your next tact or intraverbal set and watch the data climb.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
We replicated and extended the study by Koegel, Dunlap, and Dyer (1980) by examining the effects of 3 intertrial-interval (ITI) durations on skill acquisition in 2 children with autism spectrum disorders. Specifically, we compared the effect of short (2 s), progressive (2 s to 20 s), and long (20 s) ITIs on participants' mastery of tacts or intraverbals presented in massed-trial and varied-trial instructional formats. We also measured (a) stereotypic and problem behavior during the ITI, (b) maintenance of skills, and (c) responding to novel adults and settings. Results showed that short ITIs in a varied-trial format produced the most efficient acquisition of skills; however, most ITI durations produced more efficient skill acquisition in a varied format compared to a massed format. The trial format and ITI duration associated with the lowest levels of stereotypic and problem behavior during the ITI and responding during maintenance and novel adult and setting probes differed across participants.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2016 · doi:10.1002/jaba.322