The effects of adding group contingency to discrete trial training on children with developmental delays

As children with disabilities are placed in the mainstream classroom, aberrant behaviors and skills deficits are becoming more problematic for school staff. Discrete trial training is an empirically supported intervention to replace aberrant behaviors with skills. But compatibility of the discrete trial training into a school setting is difficult. This study aims to address the problem by adding group contingency to discrete trial training in an alternating intervention comparison. Four children between the ages of 2 and 4 years old were given one-on-one discrete trial training and discrete trial training in a group to determine which intervention is more compatible with a school setting. For skill training done in a group the instructor's time was reduced by 54%, correct responses in an untrained setting increased by 32%, and aberrant behaviors in an untrained setting decreased by 41%. These benefits outweigh the 15% increase in the number of trials needed for the participants to meet skill criteria in group discrete trial training. The benefit of multiple generalization techniques in group discrete trials included modeling, interdependent group contingencies, natural contingencies, and peer stimulus in multiple settings. In conclusion, providing discrete trial training in a group was found to integrate better into the school setting without adding disadvantages already found in the classroom not already found in a classroom.