Prompting
What is prompting? Prompting is the act of providing assistance to an individual to perform a correct response. The goal of prompting is to help an individual learn the correct response as quickly and efficiently as possible so that the response eventually occurs independently. When prompting is used, it is used immediately before or after an instruction. There are 2 main ways to prompt an individual to perform a correct response:
| Stimulus Prompts | Response Prompts |
|---|---|
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Prompting (Stimulus Prompts)
Stimulus prompts are actions that operate directly on the antecedent task (i.e., what happens before the correct response) to cue a correct response in conjunction with the initial instruction or SD. Stimulus prompts make the stimulus more salient (i.e., more obvious). There are 5 types of stimulus prompts:
| PROMPTS | DEFINITION | EXAMPLE |
|---|---|---|
| Gestural/Gesture | Touching, pointing to, tapping the correct response, or looking at the correct response | ✔ Mother asks child to touch her nose and mother points to her child’s nose. ✔ Father asks child to pick up his toys. Dad looks at the toys in which he wants the child to pick up. |
| Placement (Positional) Prompts | Placing the correct selection closest to the participant | ✔ Grandmother asks child to point to the ball (in an array of 3 items: ball, crayon & phone). Grandmother moves the ball close to the child and the other 2 items further from the child. |
| Visual or Textual Prompts | Using flashcards, a whiteboard, or pictures | ✔ Grandfather asks child, “What’s your name?” and Grandfather writes on a flashcard or whiteboard the child’s name. ✔ Grandfather sets up a visual schedule of pictures to show the child what is going to occur within the next 4 hours. |
| Redundancy Cues | Pairing one or more dimensions to the correct choice (i.e., size, color, shape, etc.) | ✔ Aunt wants to teach the child the written words for each color. Aunt writes out each color’s word with the corresponding ink on a flash card (e.g., RED, GREEN, PURPLE, PINK, ORANGE, BLUE). ✔ Aunt wants to teach the child to identify shapes. Aunt presents the child with 3 different shapes but makes the circle the largest and the square and triangle very small. |
| Signals | Natural environmental signals or cues | ✔ Uncle wants to transition child from bath time to bed time. Uncle sets a timer for 5 minutes and lets the child know they have 5 more minutes of bath time. |
Skills Practice
Let’s practice using stimulus prompts!
Materials Needed:
- Whiteboard, whiteboard markers, whiteboard eraser
- Flashcards, pen/pencil
- Piece of paper, pen/pencil
- Timer on a phone, tablet, or watch
- Various items in the environment
- Different color pens, markers, colored pencils, or crayons
Practice #1: Textual/Visual Prompts or Gestural Prompts
Antecedent:
Caregiver/Staff can say, “Let’s clean up your room and then you can get ___________.”
Have some sort of reinforcer to provide the child at the end of the task.
Behavior:
Caregiver or staff will use a whiteboard, flash cards, piece of paper, or gestures (i.e., pointing) in order to prompt the child to clean up his room. Caregiver/Staff will not use their voice and only use textual (written text) or gestures (pointing).
Consequence:
After task is complete provide reinforcement to the child and praise. “Great job you now get to ___________.” Caregiver/Staff debriefs with clinical team.
Note: You can use this for a variety of tasks and skill levels. You can choose: making your bed, putting away dishes, feeding the pet, doing homework, eating, etc.
Question for Caregiver or Staff Member: What’s 2 things you did well during this skills practice?
Practice #2: Placement/Positional Prompts or Redundancy Cues
Antecedent: Caregiver/Staff use the PicCollage app and put 3 items on one of the pages of the app (e.g., ball, crayon, & phone). The ball is the largest and closest to the child. Caregiver/Staff say, “Touch ball”
Behavior:
Child will touch the correct item in the array.
Consequence:
Caregiver/Staff will praise child and provide a reinforcer if available. Caregiver/Staff debriefs with clinical team
Note: It may be necessary for the clinical team to model this skill as this can be challenging for novel learners.
Question for Caregiver or Staff Member: What’s 2 things you did well during this skills practice?
Prompt Fading
What is Prompt Fading? Because prompting is assisting an individual to perform the correct response, it is easy for the person to become dependent on prompting. This means that the individual begins to respond in the presence of the prompt instead of the SD/instruction/natural cue. To decrease the chance of prompt dependency, it is important to fade the prompts.