There was some confusion on a previous question, so I want to provide a little more clarification. Give me feedback on if it helps!
Discrete Trial Training (DTT) – tasks are broken down into short trials that are behaviorally based including presenting a discriminative stimulus, providing a prompt (as needed), waiting for a response, providing a consequence (reinforcer or error correction), and intertrial interval.
- Discrete is in its name because it has a clear beginning and end.
- Usually measured by frequency count and converted into percentage
- A mouse pressing a button when the light turns on for food
Natural Environment Training (NET) – Teaching within naturally occurring settings or environments with discriminative stimuli.
- Like DTT, a discriminative stimulus is still present, but the difference might be that the consequence is built into the environment.
- For example, when your leaner is looking for a spoon to eat their snack, you might let them know the spoon is next to the bowl (access to spoon provides access to snack and they demonstrated looking “next to” to find the item in natural environment vs. identifying "next to" in a more structured setting).
Free Operant – a response class unlimited by constraints or prompts from others. It can be freely and repeatedly emitted.
- Unlike DTT, the learner does not wait for an instruction or prompt for the response or next responses.
- Free operants are measured by rate data.