Running head: TASK ANALYSIS AND CHAINING 1

Task Analysis and Chaining Project

Debbie Roth

EDU 347
TASK ANAYSIS AND CHAINING 2

Student Information

Thomas is an eight year old African American male with a learning disability. He is in

second grade and receives his education primarily in the general education classroom. During the

day, he is pulled out occasionally to work with a special education teacher. When he is with the

special education teacher, he receives additional instruction and support, particularly in language

arts. This includes additional work with phonics. He benefits from one-on-one instruction and

time in a quiet place because he is easily distracted. Thomas does not have a paraeducator.

Thomas is very energetic and talkative. He loves receiving attention and is very friendly. Thomas

enjoys working on the computer, especially when someone can sit with him. The computer

programs used focus on math and reading instruction and review, which are tailored to each

student’s level and adjust in difficulty as the student completes activities. The programs are

designed to allow students to experience success.

Thomas is currently living with his aunt and seven of his cousins. Previously, he was

living with his grandmother, whom he still occasionally visits his grandmother. Thomas’

teachers have noticed changes in his attention and his work since the change in his living

situation. He is completing his homework less frequently and is more distracted during the

school day. Thomas has told the special education teacher that no one at home will help him

study for tests.

Targeted Task

The targeted task chosen for Thomas is tying the laces of his shoes. This is an important

daily life skill that his teachers, both general education and special education, identified as a

need. Thomas wears shoes with laces on most school days and they are often untied. Because

Thomas is in second grade, it is expected that he can tie his own shoes. Thomas needs to be able
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to tie his shoes to avoid tripping and injuring himself. He travels around the school throughout

the day to go to the special education class room, gym, lunch, etc. Untied shoes make walking a

potential safety risk.

Shoe tying is composed of many steps, all of which must be mastered for shoe tying to

occur properly. If all steps in the process are not completed properly, Thomas’s shoes may

become untied again quickly and/or the potential for tripping and injury may still exist. If his

shoes are constantly becoming untied, he will be distracted by the need to tie his shoes frequently

and will miss out on instruction. Thomas will need to tie his shoes in the morning before school.

He will also need to tie his shoes whenever they become untied during the day. This may happen

at home, at school, or in the community.

Task Analysis

A task analysis was created to ensure that Thomas learned all the steps needed to tie his

shoes. The task was broken down into 11 steps as follows:

Task: Shoe Tying

1. Pick up right lace with right hand

2. Pick up left lace with left hand

3. Cross laces

4. Pull one lace under the other

5. Pull tight

6. Make a loop with one lace

7. Wrap other lace around the loop

8. Push lace through the hole

9. Pull both loops tight

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10. Make strings even

11. Pull tight

Thomas will need certain prerequisite skills before the chaining procedure is

implemented. Thomas must have the fine motor skills necessary to manipulate the laces of his

shoes appropriately. He will need to know his right side of his body from his left in order to grab

the correct lace in the correct hand. Thomas must also be aware of why shoe tying is important.

Without this knowledge, he may learn how to tie his shoes but fail to do so or fail to generalize

the skill. Thomas will need to have shoes with laces at each session in order for the chaining

procedure to be implemented.

Possible challenges associated with this chaining procedure include sustained attention

and motivation. With many tasks in school, Thomas is easily distracted. Keeping Thomas

focused on shoe tying as he learns the various skills and is repeatedly performing the same task

may be difficult. Additionally, his teachers report that he does not want to tie his shoes. It is a

task that he does not view as enjoyable. Providing regular reinforcement will be necessary to

overcome his potential obstacle.

Chaining Procedure

There are three approaches to chaining: forward chaining, backward chaining, and total

task (Snodgrass, Meadan, Ostrosky, & Cheung, 2017). Slocum and Tiger (2011) compared the

effectiveness of forward and backward chaining as well as student preference. Both forward and

backward chaining are effective strategies and one is not better than the other (Slocum & Tiger,

2011). Furthermore, student preference between the two is not consistent across chaining

procedures, making teacher choice more about functionality and what is logical rather than a

more effective or student-preferred method. (Slocum & Tiger, 2011). For this chaining
TASK ANAYSIS AND CHAINING 5

procedure, forward chaining was chosen. In forward chaining, instruction begins with teaching

the child the first step in the task analysis until they can complete it independently, then the

second step, and so on until the child can complete the entire task independently (Snodgrass et

al., 2017) Forward chaining was chosen for this procedure primarily because, after collecting

baseline data, it was clear that Thomas had mastered or almost mastered the first 6 steps in the

task analysis but was unable to complete the rest of the steps in the task analysis independently.

It made the most sense to build onto what Thomas already knew through forward chaining.

Praise is very reinforcing for Thomas, as he values attention highly. Thomas was

reinforced with verbal praise after completing all the steps in the task analysis which he could

complete independently, as well as at the completion of the entire chain. Administering praise at

both of these stages in the chain reinforced what he was able to do by himself as well as what he

could accomplish with prompting. Typically in forward chaining, praise is provided only after

the completion of the steps that the child has been taught (Slocum & Tiger, 2011). However,

providing praise after the completion of the entire task was necessary to keep Thomas’s

motivation high so that he would continue to stay focused on the task and attempt the steps that

were more difficult for him with teacher assistance.

Least-to-most (LTM) prompt fading was used during this chaining procedure.

Miltenberger (2014) explains that prompts have a hierarchy of intrusiveness. In LTM, the teacher

uses the least intrusive prompt first and uses more intrusive prompts only as necessary

(Miltenberger, 2014). Bancroft, Weiss, Libby, and Ahearn (2011) found LTM to be one of the

most efficient methods of prompting fading. LTM was chosen because of time constraints with

this procedure and ability level of Thomas. With limited time to work with Thomas, an efficient

system was needed. Furthermore, Thomas had suitable prerequisite skills and understanding of
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the task to complete the prompted steps with less intrusive prompts. Prompting was primarily

verbal, the least intrusive prompt, with occasional gestural prompting or physical guidance

(Miltenberger, 2014).

Within a chaining procedure, there is the question of how the untrained steps should be

addressed. Three options are student completion (SC), teacher completion (TC), and no

completion (NC) (Bancroft et al., 2011). Following their research on which option is the most

effective and efficient, Bancroft et al. (2011) suggest that SC may be the best default strategy

because in their study, the majority of students were most successful with the SC condition. The

chaining procedure with Thomas used SC. Effectiveness was one factor in this decision. SC was

also the best option for Thomas because it is likely that Thomas would not have accepted TC

well. He likes to do things himself and when he cannot, he often becomes discouraged.

Results

This chaining procedure proved successful. By session 11, Thomas was able to tie his

shoes independently, completing all 11 steps in the task analysis by himself. During the baseline

phase, Thomas was able to complete about half of the chain successfully, the average between

sessions being 5.5 out of 11 steps. Thomas demonstrated during baseline that he could pick up

his laces in the correct hands, cross the laces, put one lace under the other, pull tight, and make a

loop with one lace. However, Thomas could not get beyond this point. He was not able to

continue the chain by wrapping the other lace around the loop. During intervention, Thomas

made fairly consistent progress, with a general trend of completing one new step independently

during each session. However, from the seventh session to the eighth session, Thomas regressed,

completing 9 out of 11 steps in seventh but only 8 out of 11 steps during the eighth. This can be

attributed to the two week span between the seventh and eighth sessions. After this small
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regression, Thomas’ progress continued at a rate of one new step per session until he could

complete the entire chain independently.

Thomas responded well to the chaining procedure. Although he did not always want to

work on tying his shoes, he could be persuaded through attention and praise. Once he actually

started each day, he became engaged and determined to tie his shoes, despite the fact that he had

previously said he was not interested in doing so.

Graph 1. AB Graph showing the shoe-tying steps that Thomas completed independently during

baseline and the following chaining intervention.

Future Recommendations

The most challenging part of this intervention was motivating Thomas to start at the

beginning of our time together each day. Once he started, he worked well and was engaged in the

learning. However, most days he was not interested in beginning the task. He would tell me that

he already knew how to tie his shoes or that he did not like tying his shoes. To motivate him, I

often reminded him that it would not take very long and that it was helping me to become a
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teacher. I also thanked him for coming out to the hallway with me and for helping me before we

started any chaining procedure or work on any of the individual steps. This praise seemed to act

as motivation to begin.

It would have been helpful to work with Thomas more consistently. We only worked on

this chaining procedure one day per week and sometimes even less frequently if there were

breaks from school. If we could have worked together more frequently, Thomas may not have

regressed at all and may have completed all the steps independently over a shorter period of

time.

I also found that my initial plan of using primarily verbal prompts and occasional gestural

prompts worked well for almost all steps in the chaining procedure. However, Thomas needed

physical prompting for step eight. This proved difficult because Thomas wanted to complete

everything himself. Yet verbal, gestural, and modeling prompts did not work for Thomas in

initially acquiring this step in the chain. I had to convince Thomas to let me do it with him a

couple of times. Although convincing him took a while, eventually he agreed. Once I felt

confident that he knew exactly how to push the lace through the hole, I faded to less intrusive

prompts.
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Bibliography

Bancroft, L. S., Wiess, J. S., Libby, M. E., & Ahearn, W. H. (2011). A comparison of procedural

variations in teaching behavior chains: Manual guidance, trainer completion, and no

completion of untrained steps. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 44(4), 559-569.

Miltenberger, R. G. (2014). Behavior modification: Principles and procedures. Boston,

MA: Cengage Learning.

Slocum, S. K. & Tiger, J. H. (2011). An assessment of the efficiency of and child preference for

forward and backward chaining. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 44(4), 793-805.

Snodgrass, M. R., Meadan, H., Ostrosky, M. M., & Cheung, W. C. (2017). One step at a time:

Using task analyses to teach skills. Early Childhood Education Journal, 45, 855-862.