Errorless Establishment of Letter Discriminations with a Stimulus Fading Procedure in Pre-School Children

A stimulus fading procedure was compared to a reinforcement-only procedure for teaching letter discriminations using a counterbalanced, within-subject experimental design. During 2 experimental sessions, 6 preschool children were taught first a p-q letter discrimination and then a b-d discrimination. For 3 Ss a fading procedure was used with the p-q discrimination and a reinforcement-only procedure was used with the b-d discrimination. For the other 3 Ss the procedures were reversed. Transfer to textual material was also tested and Ss questioned about their training preferences. All Ss had fewer total errors and fewer trials to criterion with the fading procedure. Four of the 6 Ss demonstrated errorless learning. There was no difference between the procedures in the transfer test. All Ss expressed a preference for the fading procedure over the reinforcement-only procedure.