Effects of errorless training on teaching children to discriminate letters of the alphabet

Abstract

108 preschool 4-5 yr olds were taught to discriminate letters of the alphabet by either (a) an errorless-training approach in which the obvious cue used during training highlighted the distinctive feature of the letter to be discriminated, (b) an errorless-training approach in which the obvious cue did not highlight the distinctive feature, or (c) the traditional reinforcement-extinction approach. The first errorless- training group made fewer errors during training as compared to the reinforcement-extinction group. On both an immediate and a delayed posttest, the first errorless-training group made significantly fewer errors compared to the other 2 groups; this indicates that errorless training is effective, provided that the distinctive feature of the letter to be discriminated is highlighted during training. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)