Applying “Mastery” Criteria to Sets and Individual Operants: A Replication with Preschoolers with Disabilities

Emerging literature suggests that applying acquisition "mastery" criteria to individual operants speeds a child’s acquisition of listener responses, tacts, intraverbals, and textual responses. In this study, researchers taught 8 preschool children up to 20 tacts under two conditions. In set analysis (SA), researchers taught four tacts at a time and when the aggregated accuracy was 100% in 1 session, they taught 4 new tacts in the next session. In operant analysis, researchers taught 4 tacts at a time and when the accuracy of a single operant was 100% in 1 session, they replaced that with a novel stimulus in the next session and continued to teach all operants with lower accuracy. We compared the number of learning opportunities required to meet the acquisition criterion as well as the strength of stimulus control during follow-up assessments. Overall, most participants learned faster in the OA condition and maintenance was comparable between conditions.