Error-free Learning in the Rehabilitation of People with Memory Impairments

Despite a long tradition of applying techniques of error-free learning in behavioral psychology, used to teach new skills to people with developmental learning disabilities, principles of error-free learning have only recently been explicitly employed in the rehabilitation of people with cognitive deficits acquired later in life. The authors review the studies that have compared error-free with errorful learning methods, discuss the cognitive analysis of error-free learning, and present some criteria for identifying situations in which error-free learning may provide a genuine advantage over trial-and-error learning.