"Task interspersal is a discrete trial training variant frequently employed for teaching skills to children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. This methodology involves interspersing trials of mastered targets with trials of acquisition targets during instruction. Early research on task interspersal has suggested that children required fewer trials to master skills when task interspersal was employed, relative to traditional discrete trial training where all targets were acquisition targets. More recent research, which measured learning as mastered targets per unit of time, has suggested that task interspersal may actually be a less efficient strategy due to the amount of additional time required to intersperse the mastered targets. Furthermore, other research has suggested that the increased ratio of reinforcement from mastered target responses may also decrease learning efficiency. On the other hand, research on a procedurally similar method known as the high-probability sequence has suggested that task interspersal may decrease escape-maintained behavior, which would in turn increase learning efficiency due to the increased time on task. However, there is a paucity of research examining the efficiency of task interspersal for children with high rates of escape-maintained behavior. Using an adapted alternating treatments, single-case design, the present study examined the effects of task interspersal and reinforcement ratios on learning efficiency for two children with high rates of escape maintained behavior and two children with low rates of escape maintained behavior. Results indicated that task interspersal did not result in more efficient learning for any of the children, but resulted in equal rates of learning relative to concurrent training for one participant with high rates of escape behavior. This study adds to the literature which suggests that task interspersal presented on a high ratio of mastered to acquisition targets is less time efficient relative to concurrent training."--Pages ii-iii.
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