Teaching with Massed Versus Interspersed Trials: Effects on Acquisition, Maintenance, and Problem Behavior

Abstract

The current study evaluated the effects of teaching three programs using massed-trial teaching (MTT) versus interspersed-trial teaching (ITT) for three participants diagnosed with autism. Specifically, we compared the (i) rate of response acquisition, (ii) percentage of trials per session with problem behavior, and (iii) number of acquisition targets maintained following mastery. For all three participants, the rate of acquisition was higher under MTT than ITT, and levels of problem behavior were similar in both conditions for each participant. Perhaps the only advantage of ITT over MTT was maintenance of targets at the follow-up probes for two participants; however, neither approach yielded consistently high levels of correct responding across 2-, 4-, and 6-week follow-up probes. Collectively, results for these three participants provide some evidence for the additive benefit of MTT over ITT.

Task interspersal for individuals with autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders

“…As a whole, recent studies have not evaluated the effects of different TI ratios on engagement in escape‐maintained problem behavior during academic instruction. Henrickson et al () and Nicholson () found that TI and MTT were associated with comparable levels of problem behavior across participants; however, participants in both studies generally displayed low rates of problem behavior across conditions, and neither study included a functional analysis of the participants’ problem behavior during instructional periods. Volkert et al () implemented escape extinction during their TI and MTT conditions; however, they did not report data on problem behavior.…”

“…They found that tacts taught using MTT consistently required the fewest trials to meet the acquisition criterion. In a methodologically similar study, Henrickson et al () compared MTT to TI across three programs (i.e., receptive identification, tacting, and sorting) for three children with ASD. The authors found that neither TI nor MTT consistently produced faster acquisition for any of the participants.…”

“…Although TI may be inferior to MTT with regard to speed of acquisition, some evidence suggests that it may promote better response maintenance than MTT. For example, Henrickson et al () found better maintenance with a 3:1 TI ratio than with MTT across participants during 2‐, 4‐, and 6‐week probes. Similarly, Nicholson (, Experiment 1) found better 2‐week maintenance with a 3:1 TI ratio than with MTT for some participants.…”

“…Across the five studies in this review, 16 participants had a diagnosis of ASD only, four participants had a diagnosis of learning disability or an unspecified developmental delay, one participant had diagnoses of ASD and ADHD, and one participant had a diagnosis of ADHD only. Each study compared response acquisition with one or more TI conditions to an MTT condition comprised of single (e.g., Henrickson, Rapp, & Ashbeck, ) or multiple (e.g., Majdalany et al, ) training targets. Four studies used a 3:1 or 4:1 known‐to‐unknown ratio (Forbes et al, ; Henrickson et al, ; Majdalany et al, ; Nicholson, , Experiment 1), two studies used a 1:1 ratio (Nicholson, , Experiment 1; Volkert, Lerman, Trosclair, Addison, & Kodak, ), and one study used a 1:3 ratio of known to unknown trials (Nicholson, ).…”

The effects of intertrial interval and instructional format on skill acquisition and maintenance for children with autism spectrum disorders

“…For example, researchers have compared massed‐trial instruction, interspersed‐trial instruction, and varied‐trial instruction in the acquisition of target skills. In massed‐trial instruction, the instructor presents the same unmastered target stimulus on each trial throughout the session (e.g., Grow, Carr, Kodak, Jostad, & Kisamore, ; Henrickson, Rapp, & Ashbeck, ). In interspersed‐trial instruction, the instructor presents unmastered target stimuli interspersed with mastered stimuli that are similar (e.g., Dunlap, ; Neef, Iwata, & Page, ; Volkert, Lerman, Trosclair, Addison, & Kodak, ) or dissimilar (e.g., Volkert et al, ) to the unmastered target stimuli throughout the session.…”