Discrete Trial Teaching and Discrimination Training

Abstract

Discrete trial teaching (DTT) and discrimination training are among the most supported components of early and intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI). DTT is a highly structured procedure for presenting learning opportunities to the child, and discrimination training concerns how these opportunities are structured to optimize learning. This chapter starts with a description of the elements of DTT, followed by a brief description of other teaching procedures often used in conjunction with DTT. Subsequently, we describe the areas in which DTT has been applied and the scientific support it has received. In the next section, we provide a detailed description of the most common discrimination training procedures, together with other more systematic and incremental procedures used when the more traditional approaches have been unsuccessful. In the last section of this chapter, we discuss other strategies and procedures that can be used to optimize and individualize DTT and discrimination learning.