Discrete trial teaching
A structured teaching method that breaks skills into short, repeated learning trials, each with a clear instruction, the learner's response, a consequence, and a brief pause.
Discrete trial teaching (DTT), also called discrete trial training or instruction, teaches skills through a series of separate trials. Each trial has a clear beginning and end. A typical trial has these parts:
- The discriminative stimulus (SD): a brief instruction or presentation of materials, such as "Touch dog" with three pictures on the table.
- A prompt, if the plan calls for one, given with or just after the SD.
- The learner's response.
- The consequence: reinforcement for a correct response, or the plan's error correction procedure for an incorrect or missing response.
- The intertrial interval: a short pause in which the RBT records data and prepares the next trial.
DTT is useful for teaching new skills that benefit from many practice opportunities in a short time, such as receptive identification, imitation, matching and early vocabulary. The teacher controls the materials and pacing, which makes data collection precise. Trials of different targets are often mixed so that the learner must attend to the SD rather than repeat the last answer.
Its main limits are that skills taught at a table may not generalize to everyday settings and that the learner does not choose the activity. For this reason supervisors often combine DTT with naturalistic teaching and planned generalization. The RBT runs trials exactly as written, with a consistent SD, accurate prompts and immediate reinforcement, and records each trial.
Example and non-example
| Example | At a table, the RBT says "Clap hands," the child claps, the RBT says "Great clapping!" and gives a token, records a plus, waits a few seconds, and presents the next instruction. |
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| Non-example | While a child plays with blocks on the floor, the RBT waits for the child to reach for a block and then prompts "Block, please." Teaching that follows the child's lead in play is naturalistic teaching. |
Don't confuse it with
| Naturalistic teaching | DTT is teacher-led with planned trials and materials; naturalistic teaching follows the learner's interests during natural activities. |
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Test yourself
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Question 1During discrete-trial teaching, which recording practice best protects the accuracy of the data?
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A: Recording each trial's outcome right after the trial. Recording each response immediately leaves little room for memory errors. Delayed or selective recording leads to estimates that can be biased in either direction.
- B: Recording only some trials gives an incomplete and possibly biased picture.
- C: Waiting until the end relies on memory and invites errors.
- D: An estimate is not a record of what happened on each trial.
Task A.8 · 40-hour curriculum section C
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Question 2Which sequence shows the core parts of a discrete trial in the correct order?
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A: Instruction, learner response, consequence, intertrial interval. A discrete trial begins with a brief instruction (the discriminative stimulus), followed by the learner's response and then a consequence, with a short intertrial interval before the next trial. A prompt, when the plan calls for one, is given with or right after the instruction.
- B: The consequence follows the response; it cannot come before the instruction that starts the trial.
- C: A discrete trial starts with the instructor's instruction (the SD), and the response comes after it.
- D: The intertrial interval is the pause after the consequence, between one trial and the next.
Task C.3 · 40-hour curriculum section E
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Question 3An RBT says "Touch cup" while a cup, a spoon and a plate are on the table. The client touches the cup, and the RBT immediately says "You touched the cup!" and hands over a token, as the plan directs. In this trial, the praise and token are the:
Show answer
B: Consequence. Whatever the RBT delivers after the response is the consequence part of the trial. Here, praise and a token followed a correct response, so they are the consequence meant to reinforce it.
- A: The discriminative stimulus is the instruction "Touch cup" (with the materials), which comes before the response.
- C: A prompt is extra help given before or during the response; the praise and token came after a correct response.
- D: The intertrial interval is the short pause after the consequence and before the next instruction.
Task C.3 · 40-hour curriculum section E
Answer every question to see your score.
On the RBT exam
This term belongs to task C.3 Discrete-trial teaching in content area C, Behavior Acquisition, which is 19 of the 75 scored questions.