massed trials vs #of trials per program

[Guest guest]

To the the poster of the original query: I am not an expert so anybody can

correct me.

Although your subject line said Mass trials, your description in the post said

20 trials of the program per session. This is not the same as Mass trials.

Massed trials are same trials in a row (back to back)whether you do 3 trials or

20 trials

ex: clap your hands,

clap your hands,

clap your hands ,

clap your hands.

This has some place in the very early stages of an ABA program or when a skill

is just being introduced. My understanding of a mass trial is that if a child is

successful without prompts after 1or 2 trials you don't proceed with the mass

trial. You only do mass trials if the child is not successful and is continuing

to need prompts. After 7 years of ABA we still do mass trials for articulation

problems. We are currently working on my daughter's 'sh' sound. So we make her

say 'shirt' or some other sh word 10 times in a row. This gives her practice. We

come back to it a few minutes later after doing some other program and make her

say it 10 more times and a little while later another 10 more times. We have

seen great success with this and I actually learned this from her SLP who has no

familiarity with ABA. Prior to this we targeted the same skill randomly like VB

and got no where.

On the other hand, number of trials of the program per session is probably

something we all do. These trials are not necessarily back to back but the

number of times that skill was targeted in a 2 or 3 hour session.

ex: clap your hands,

say Mommy

What is this?

Touch your nose

touch the cat

the cat says _____

clap your hands.

Say baby

what is this?

touch baby

clap your hands

In the above example 'clap your hands' was hit 3 times.

So hitting 'clap your hands' as described above for a total of 20 times per

session sounds good to me. Often times my therapists want to know how many times

each target skill needs to be hit per a 3 hour session. They like to know that

so they don't neglect a certain skill and it keeps them structured and on track.

Most skills we try do 10 trials ( not mass) per session. Some skills need be hit

more frequently.

However I do agree with the person who said this number needs to be determined

by the individual child and the target skill.

Mahija