Although several investigators have used prompting and fading techniques to teach tasks with few or no errors, there has been disagreement about subsequent transfer and retention as compared with trial-and-error learning. Fourth grade students in an errorless fading condition learned a symbol discrimination task by a prompting and fading program in which relevant characteristics of the line drawings were emphasized. Another group learned the same discrimination by trial-and-error with right-and-wrong feedback. Findings indicated that percentage of errors was less for errorless fading than trial-and-error in initial learning but did not differ during transfer or retention. However, in terms of time, a history of prompting-fading learning did not transfer to trial-and-error learning as well as one of trial-and-error learning.
Weighing Up Exercises on Phrasal Verbs: Retrieval Versus Trial‐and‐Error Practices
