Presenting Author: Andy Bondy, Ph.D.
At ABAI's 20th Annual Autism Conference in January 2026, Dr. Andy Bondy presented Gradualism: A Unifying Concept Across Teaching Strategies. Within the field of behavior analysis, there are distinct terms to describe a host of teaching strategies. One set of strategies is associated with shaping, while many others involve various types of prompts and related strategies to remove those prompts. Some strategies involving prompts describe features that can be faded while other strategies involve changes within a variety of prompt hierarchies. This talk suggests a way of discussing prompts to help minimize the current level of confusion within the field regarding this topic. Another subset of teaching strategies is described as errorless, varying between changes in stimulus features, response features, or temporal features. Other strategies involve modifications of various reinforcement contingencies and schedules of reinforcement. The goal of this presentation is to suggest that what these, and many other teaching strategies, have in common can be identified as gradualism. Gradualism involves systematically making small changes to a feature of the teaching process in a manner that accumulates over time and opportunities, resulting in substantial skill acquisition.
Instruction Level: Intermediate
Target Audience:
This session is designed for behavior analysts, psychologists, educators, and practitioners who design or implement teaching programs in applied or research settings. It will be particularly valuable for professionals and graduate students who want to deepen their conceptual understanding of shaping, prompting, fading, and errorless learning strategies, and to explore a unifying framework that simplifies and clarifies these approaches. Supervisors, instructors, and researchers interested in advancing both the precision and coherence of teaching practices will also benefit.
Learning Objectives:
1. The learner will describe 3 prompting and errorless teaching strategies
2. The learner will describe how gradualism links these 3 strategies
3. The learner will describe how gradualism links shaping, time delay, and prompting strategies