Association for Behavior Analysis International

The role feedback plays in the training and effective maintenance of skill is of great importance. However, it is not always clear as to what methods or amount of feedback are considered to be most effective depending on the skills being trained. The current symposium will present three studies attempting to evaluate further various methods of feedback and its impact on performance in a variety of skills. Skills being evaluated include the implementation of functional analysis procedures, Direct Instruction, and common office tasks. Specifically, the papers will discuss relevant features of feedback including temporal delivery of feedback, frequency of feedback and the role self rating may impact performance. The outcomes of these research papers provide insight into which methods of feedback may be most effective and potential areas for future research.

Despite the common use of feedback in most training settings, it is not clear yet what behavioral function feedback serves. Most researchers consider feedback to function as a consequence and advocate for its immediate delivery in the form of on-the-spot supervision or after-session conferencing. The literature suggests that when compared, on-the-spot supervision is found more effective than after session conferencing. Despite these findings, most supervisors are still implementing after-session conferencing probably due to the limited feasibility performing on-the-spot supervision when supervening teachers implementing whole class or small group instruction. One way to overcome the feasibility issue of on-the-spot supervision and still providing feedback effectively, is by providing feedback before the next opportunity to perform. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of feedback provided (a) after the teaching session versus (b) before the following teaching session on (1) accuracy of error correction procedure and (2) rate of specific praise of undergraduate Applied Behavior Analysis students implementing Direct Instruction (DI) to a small group of children. An adapted alternating design was utilized to evaluate the effects of feedback in its two forms, on the teachers performance. Results will be presented and findings will be discussed.