Errorless learning

Errorless learning was an instructional design introduced by psychologist Charles Ferster in the 1950s as part of his studies on what would make the most effective learning environment. B. F. Skinner was also influential in developing the technique, and noted: 'errors are not necessary for learning to occur. Errors are not a function of learning or vice versa nor are they blamed on the learner. Errors are a function of poor analysis of behavior, a poorly designed shaping program, moving too fast from step to step in the program, and the lack of the prerequisite behavior necessary for success in the program.' Errorless learning can also be understood at a synaptic level, using the principle of Hebbian learning ('Neurons that fire together wire together').A simple discrimination learning procedure is one in which a subject learns to associate one stimulus, S+ (positive stimulus), with reinforcement (e.g. food) and another, S− (negative stimulus), with extinction (e.g. absence of food). For example, a pigeon can learn to peck a red key (S+), and avoid a green key (S−). Using traditional procedures, a pigeon would be initially trained to peck a red key (S+). When the pigeon was responding consistently to the red key (S+), a green key (S−) would be introduced. At first the pigeon would also respond to the green key (S−) but gradually responses to this key would decrease, because they are not followed by food, so that they occurred only a few times or even never.The errorless learning procedure is highly effective in reducing the number of responses to the S− during training. In Terrace's (1963) experiment, subjects trained with the conventional discrimination procedure averaged over 3000 S− (errors) responses during 28 sessions of training; whereas subjects trained with the errorless procedure averaged only 25 S− (errors) responses in the same number of sessions.However, some evidence suggests that errorless learning may not be as qualitatively different from conventional training as Terrace initially claimed. For example, Rilling (1977) demonstrated in a series of experiments that these 'by-products' can occur after errorless learning, but that their effects may not be as large as in the conventional procedure; and Marsh and Johnson (1968) found that subjects given errorless training were very slow to make a discrimination reversal.Interest from psychologists studying basic research on errorless learning declined after the 1970s. However, errorless learning attracted the interest of researchers in applied psychology, and studies have been conducted with both children (e.g., educational settings) and adults (e.g. Parkinson's patients). Errorless learning continues to be of practical interest to animal trainers, particularly dog trainers.