ABCs of Behavioral Teaching
We’ve used the phrase ‘learning trial’ many times – now we’ll explain what that really means. In fact, we’re going to tell you a little bit about the ABC’s of behavioral teaching. This kind of highly structured teaching is called Discrete Trial Training (DTT) or sometimes Discrete Trial Instruction (DTI). In DTT, a learning “trial” has three main parts, A, B and C.
A = Antecedent
B = Behavior
C = Consequence
The antecedent (A) is letting the child know what she is supposed to do. As we have said before, sometimes this does not require words while at other times it does. For example, when teaching a child to request, you can just hold something you think she’ll want where she can see it but a little out of her reach; whereas when teaching a child to imitate, you do the action yourself and say, “Do this”.
At first, a prompt (P) is often needed to let the child know what to do and how to do it. The prompt also helps to make sure that the child follows the instruction.
P
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A → B → C
The second part of a learning trial is the child’s response or the “behavior” (B) she engages in following the antecedent (A). A child can respond correctly with a prompt (P), correctly all by herself (+), or incorrectly (–). Or, in some cases, she may give no response at all, even after you have given her plenty of time to respond. The third part of the learning trial is what happens just after the child’s response, like the reward she receives when she responds correctly. This is called the Consequence (C) because what you do directly after the child’s response should be “contingent upon” (depend on) her response/behavior (B). In other words, what YOU do, directly after your child responds to your instruction, should be a direct consequence of your child’s response.
Identifying the ABC’s of a Teaching Trial
Now let’s look at a clip of a single learning trial and see if you can pick out the three parts; the Antecedent, Behavior and Consequence. If there is a prompt, what kind of prompt is used? And what is the skill being taught?
Antecedent: Teacher places a cup, a block and a spoon on the table. Each is placed in the center of a paper plate. She holds up a picture of a cup and says, “cup” and then hands the child the picture.
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Prompt: The teacher points to the cup without touching it and also looks at it.
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Behavior: The child places the picture of the cup on the cup.
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Consequence: The teacher reinforces the correct, prompted response. The reinforcer for this trial is praise, (“That’s the cup. Good job,”) followed by a small piece of a cookie. She puts the piece of cookie in his hand immediately after she praises him.
Skill being taught is Object to Picture Matching
Let’s look at another trial of the same teaching program (object to picture matching).
Antecedent: Teacher places a cup, a block and a spoon on the table. Each is placed in the center of a paper plate. She holds up a picture of a spoon and says, “Spoon” and then hands the child the picture.
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Prompt: The teacher points to the spoon without touching it and also looks at it.
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Behavior: The child places the picture of the spoon on the spoon.
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Consequence: The teacher reinforces the correct, prompted response. The reinforcer for this trial is praise (“That’s the spoon. You did it. Good job.”) paired with a little tickle.
Skill being taught: Object to Picture Matching
Now, let’s watch those two trials together.