Date of Award

5-2019

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Behavior Analysis and Therapy

First Advisor

Dixon, Mark

Second Advisor

Koch, Shane

Third Advisor

Enoch, Mary

Abstract

Various prompting procedures designed to minimize errors during the acquisition of new skills have been studied with reference to their utility in treating deficits associated with developmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In the present study, an alternating treatments design is used to compare the differential effects of a prompting procedure designed to minimize the completion of errors by intercepting and redirecting through hand-over-hand prompting upon the initiation of a response versus a trial-and-error prompting procedure are examined in teaching four children diagnosed with ASD to complete a match-to-sample categorization task using stimuli that are putatively arbitrary to the participants. The results indicated that both prompting procedures were ineffective in teaching two of the participants the task and showed no substantial differential effects on the acquisition of the skill for the other two participants. Limitations of this study in addition to appropriate avenues for future research are discussed.

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