Some Thoughts on Errorless Teaching

I wrote this up for some groups on Facebook where autism parents meet. I couldn't find much online about errorless teaching, in the autistic viewpoint. So, I wrote this for that reason.



Errorless teaching is an ABA technique in which the therapist, or adult, presents two options, and does not allow the child to answer incorrectly. By pulling the 'wrong' answer away as the child reaches for it, or by presenting the right option, one way or another, the child is "blocked from answering incorrectly". 

Once the child shows signs of understanding, the prompt is changed to a different level, and the guidance is slowly waned, until the child gets the answer right "all on his own". 

Therapists say it's to avoid the child learning to depend on getting the wrong answer, before going to the right one. They say that it is to avoid teaching incorrect things.

Here's what I see as an autistic, and as a mother watching my child go through this:

When you use errorless teaching, you are telling your child that you do not trust them to get the right answer. You are presuming incompetence. You are denying the fact that your child may have opinions or desires that do not match yours, and that he/she may have no interest whatsoever in the "yellow" because the "blue" looks better next to what he is working on.

See, autistics do tend to be "in their own world" if you want to call it that, and we may hear you say "pick the yellow" but we see you holding out a blue thing, and a yellow thing, and maybe we know what blue and yellow are, but we have an aversion to the brightness of yellow, or are working to our own goal with these pieces. To take away what appears to be our choice of blue, because you want us to pick yellow, is not cool. And, at best, teaches compliance.

I see this anytime this happens with my son. If he is interested in the one they want him to pick, he is rewarded, for what to him is just what he wants. He paid no real attention to the other option. When he doesn't want the desired option, he gets frustrated that he can't get to the option he wants, and will sometimes go into a meltdown.

Errorless teaching does not take into account any of the internal processes of thinking a child may be going through. It just says "I said to do this, and you will do this"

IF this isn't troublesome for you, it might interest you- or not- to know that when you search errorless teaching on Google, a lot of talk about how to teach- or re-teach- people with traumatic brain injury comes up- as well as autism.

Is your child brain-damaged? Do they have an intellectual disability?

Historically, Autism was diagnosed as, and considered to be "lesser brain damage". I do not think, in any way, shape, or form, that it is at all benign to use teaching methods for people with TBI, on autistic children. It reinforces ideas about the autistic brain, that we've worked for years to overcome. Autism is not brain damage, and should not be treated as such.