Using Brief Academic Assessments to Determine Generalization Strategies

This study examined the utility of brief academic assessments to identify effective generalization procedures for individual students. Specifically, the study built on the proposal that brief assessments of antecedent and consequence manipulations can identify the most effective generalization strategy for individual students. The design was an alternating treatments design nested within a multiple baseline across six students. Students learned how to solve a set of multiplication facts using a common strategy while spontaneous generalization to other sets of facts was measured. Next, researchers determined whether an antecedent- or consequent-based generalization strategy would be more effective for increasing generalization across multiplication skills and conducted an extended analysis with an alternating treatment phase to confirm results of the brief assessment. Results indicated that the assessment correctly identified the most effective generalization strategy for five of the six students.