Incidental Teaching

@LovaasInstituteBlog

Incidental teaching is not the same as mand training. Incidental teaching can include mand training, discrete trial teaching, or both. In incidental teaching, mand training or discrete trial teaching are implemented in a specific way. That specific way is as follows:

1. establishing operations (i.e., environment is created in which objects become valuable)
2. child demonstrates interest by initiating an interaction

if the goal is to teach requesting then mand training procedures continue including:

3. a prompt (i.e., any help the instructor gives to the child)
4. a behavior (i.e., what the child does)
5. a consequence (i.e., whether or not the behavior is reinforced)

if the goal is to teach a discriminative stimulus, then discrete trial training procedures continue including:

3. the discriminative stimulus (i.e., what the instructor says or does)
4. a prompt (i.e., any help the instructor gives to the child)
5. a response (i.e., what the child does)
6. a consequence (i.e., whether or not the response is reinforced)


*the reinforcement is related to the SD which is related to the interaction initiated by the child.

Here are two examples of incidental teaching: