Prevention of incorrect responding for establishing instruction following behaviours.

A comparison of two techniques for teaching instruction-following to severely retarded children was the purpose of the present study. The design consisted of a cross-over design involving a cross-over of techniques for each of the three subjects. Within the experimental condition the instructions were presented by physically preventing the subject from making an incorrect response, that is, interrupting an incorrect movement. The results were in favour of the experimental condition in comparison with a trial-and-error approach. The data obtained in this investigation provide further evidence for the notion of errorless-discrimination learning.