Prompting

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Prompting

• Chapter 17 (Cooper, et. al)Chapter 4
• (MacDuff, et. al)
• (Demchek, 1990)

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Prompting and Prompt Fading

• Prompts
• supplemental stimuli that control the target
  response but are not a part of the natural SD
  that will eventually control the behavior
• (Touchette Howard, 1984)
• Prompts are given before or during the
  performance of a behavior
• they help behavior occur so that the teacher can
  provide reinforcement
• Only introduced during the acquisition phase of
  instruction

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Prompting and Prompt Fading

• Transfer of Stimulus Control
• technique used to fade response and stimulus
  prompts
• Prompts should be used only during acquisition
• Transfer stimulus control from prompt to
  naturally-existing stimuli quickly using fading

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2 Types of Prompts

• Response Prompts stimuli added to a childs
  response
• Verbal Directions
• Modeling
• Physical Guidance
• How else can we say this?
• Stimulus Prompts Stimuli used in conjunction
  with the task stimuli or instructional materials
• Movement Cues
• Position Cues
• Redundance

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Response prompts stimuli added to a childs
response

• Verbal directions
• can be one word or several in length and are used
  very often in typical classrooms
• vocal or written
• e.g., When teaching a child to tie a shoe can
  say remember to make the bows big
• e.g., remind the student what they need to do
  Remember do your math worksheet and then we can
  go to the party

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Response prompts stimuli added to a childs
response

• Verbal directions
• Can be used with children with autism but..
• Child must have responding that is rule-governed
  or use familiar language
• Make sure they are not prompts but critical
  variables of concern
• E.g., instructions can be taught to respond to
  these often paired with modeling

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Response prompts stimuli added to a childs
response

• Modeling prompts
• a behavior can be modeled by demonstrating the
  desired behavior so that it can be imitated. It
  can be used in combination with other prompts
• Child must have generalized imitation
• e.g., words on a card to be copied writing
  activity schedules
• e.g., videotaping the actions of a play script
• e.g., drawing the components for an art script
• e.g., posture and attention

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Response prompts stimuli added to a childs
response

• Manual guidance
• an instructor manually guides a child through the
  entire target response
• e.g., teaching a child to dress not pulling the
  pants up for a child but putting your hands over
  the childs and guiding them pull them up

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Response Prompt Fading(Transferring from
Response Prompts to natural cues)

• Most-to-Least Prompts
• Graduated Guidance
• Shadowing and spatial fading
• Least-to-Most Prompts
• Time Delay

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Response Prompt Fading(Transferring from
Response Prompts to natural cues)

• Most-to-least
• the instructor initially guides the student
  manually through the entire performance then
  gradually reduces the amount of manual assistance
  provided as training progresses from session to
  session.
• e.g., dressing
• Gradually reduce amount of manual assistance
• Modeling
• Verbal instruction
• Natural stimulus
• When is this hierarchy appropriate?

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Response Prompt Fading(Transferring from
Response Prompts to natural cues)

• Graduated guidance
• is defined as the teacher provides a manual
  prompt only when it is needed and then it is
  faded immediately whenever the student responses
  correctly.
• Foxx and Azrin (1973) recommend using shadowing
  and spatial fading with the graduated guidance
  procedure as soon as the student is performing
  the skill independently.

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Response Prompt Fading(Transferring from
Response Prompts to natural cues)

• Graduated guidance
• Shadowing
• has the teacher following the students movements
  with her hands very near but not touching the
  child. The teacher then gradually increases the
  distance of her hands from the student.
• Spatial fading
• involves gradually changing the location of the
  manual prompt.
• e.g., if the manual prompt is used for a hand
  movement, the teacher can move the prompt from
  the hand to the wrist, to the elbow, to the
  shoulder, and then to no manual contact.

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Response Prompt Fading(Transferring from
Response Prompts to natural cues)

• Least to most prompts
• Provide participant with an opportunity to
  perform the response with the least amount of
  assistance on each trial
• Participant receives greater degrees of
  assistance with each successive trial without a
  correct response
• Advantages
• the student always has an opportunity to response
  and the students behavior determines the level
  of prompting needed for a correct response
  increasing assistance as necessary.
• Disadvantages
• multiple errors

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Example

• Joe point to the number 8
• no response
• Joe point to the number 8. Its the one between
  7 and 9 on your number line.
• No response
• Joe watch me point to the number 8 on your
  paper. Now you point to the number 8.
• He points to the 9
• Joe point to the number 8. The tutor placed his
  hand on top of Joes and moves his hand close to
  the number 8
• He points to 9
• Joe, point to the number 8. The tutor guides
  Joes fingers to the number 8

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Response Prompt Fading

• Time delay
• Varying the time interval between presentation of
  a natural stimulus and the presentation of a
  response prompt
• Constant time delay
• Begin with a 0-sec delay
• Then use a fixed delay (e.g., 3 sec)
• Progressive time delay
• Begin with a 0-sec delay
• Gradually and systematically increase delay
  (e.g., in 1-sec intervals) according to some rule

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Recommendations when using response prompt fading
methods (Demchek, 1990)

• Important to consider instructional time to
  criterion, trial to criterion and errors to
  criterion.
• Procedures that lead to less instructional time
  or fewer trial should be used

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Recommendations when using response prompt fading
methods (Demchek, 1990)

• Procedures that result in fewer errors should
  also be considered
• Once an error is made it tends to be repeated
• Errors involve time and further decrease
  instructional time
• Some individuals display non-productive responses
  when engaged in difficult tasks
• Should errorless learning be the fading strategy
  of choice for all students?

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Recommendations when using response prompt fading
methods (Demchek, 1990)

• If the focus of instruction is acquisition, the
  more efficient prompt fading method is most to
  least in terms of errors to criterion

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Recommendations when using response prompt fading
methods (Demchek, 1990)

• If instruction is focusing on fluency, least to
  most is more efficient
• If teaching discrete responses time delay appears
  to be more efficient than least to most
• If teaching chained response, constant time delay
  is more efficient than least to most.
• Constant time delay may be easier to use than
  progressive time delay and result in higher
  procedural reliability when teaching discrete
  responses

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Stimulus prompts stimuli added to an SD prior
to a child emitting a response.

• Movement prompts
• pointing to or looking at the target stimulus.
• e.g. when teaching a student to discriminate a
  penny from a dime you might point to correct
  coin.
• Positional prompts
• moving the target stimulus closer to a child.
• e.g., if asking for a dime move it closer

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Stimulus prompts stimuli added to an SD prior
to a child emitting a response.

• Redundance
• when additional dimensions (e.g., color, size
  shape) of the target stimulus are exaggerated
• e.g. prompt is exaggerating the lettering on a
  dime criterion related
• e.g., placing the correct coin on a white sheet
  of paper non-criterion related

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Stimulus Prompt Fading(Transferring from
Stimulus Prompts to natural cues)

• Stimulus prompts are faded through errorless
  learning procedures such as
• Stimulus shaping
• Transposition
• Stimulus fading
• (LaBlanc Etzel, 1981)

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Stimulus Prompt Fading(Transferring from
Stimulus Prompts to natural cues)

• -Stimulus fading
• highlighting a manual dimension (e.g., color,
  size, position) of a stimulus to increase the
  likelihood of a correct response.
• The highlighted or exaggerated dimension is faded
  gradually in or out.
• e.g., fully highlighting a letter A to teach
  handwriting criterion related prompt
• e.g., 17 and 71 in puzzles give them a one and
  have them place the one in the correct position
  to make 17 or 71 eventually fade this to a
  writing task
• criterion related prompts ensure that the child
  is attending to the relevant dimension of the
  stimulus.

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Stimulus Prompt Fading(Transferring from
Stimulus Prompts to natural cues)

• Superimposition of stimuli is
• Frequently used with stimulus fading.
• Two specific classes of stimuli are presented to
  prompt a response.
• In one instance the transfer of stimulus control
  occurs when one stimulus is faded out in another
  application one stimulus is faded in as the other
  stimulus is faded out.

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Stimulus Prompt Fading(Transferring from
Stimulus Prompts to natural cues)

• Examples of Superimposition of stimuli
• e.g. Terrace (1963)
• colored lights (red green)
• Lines superimposed on lights
• Lights faded out
• e.g., 5 2 7
• 1-2-3-4-5- 6-7
• E.g., Pg 406 407criterion related?

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Stimulus Prompt Fading(Transferring from
Stimulus Prompts to natural cues)

• Stimulus shape transformations
• Use an initial stimulus shape that will prompt a
  correct response
• This shape is gradually changed to form the
  natural stimulus, while maintaining correct
  responding
• e.g., picture of a car gradually changing to the
  written word car criterion related

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Another Way to Look at Things.MacDuff, 2001

• Classification of prompts are not really
  necessary..in reality we use them as packages
• Although Stimulus and Response prompt
  classification can be useful

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Additional promptsStimulus or Response Prompts?

• Gestural prompts
• Photographs and line drawings
• Textual prompts
• Tactile
• Tones/alarms

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Prompt-fading systemsWays to fade Stimulus or
Response Prompts?

• Most-to Least
• Least-to Most
• Time Delay
• Graduated Guidance
• Stimulus Fading
• Stimulus Shaping

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Questions to answer when selecting a prompt

• What is the target response?
• Does my prompt lead to the target response?
• What is the natural stimuli that should control
  this behavior?

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Questions to answer when selecting a prompt

• Does my prompt lead to that stimuli controlling
  the behavior?
• Order your SDs in a hierarchy from the most
  natural to the most artificial and select from
  there
• E.g. eye contact why you wouldnt say look or
  hands down
• E.g., teaching a student to discriminate b and
  d
• Extra stimulus prompt-non-criterion related
  prompts
• Within-stimulus prompts criterion related
  prompts magnified critical features

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Information to remember when fading prompts

• Am I producing a shift in attention from my
  prompt to the relevant discriminative stimuli?
• Am I decreasing the likelihood of prompt
  dependency while preventing errors?
• -e.g., fading prompts in a timely fashion
• Am I using an error-correction procedure if the
  child makes a mistake?
• Am I reinforcing only when I reduce my level of
  prompt - giving the child an incentive to
  independently perform the response?

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Coping with stimulus overdependence and
overselectivity

• Children with autisms behavior may be controlled
  by a limited number of even just one often
  non-relevant stimulus -of the complex stimulus
• E.g., placement of an object, its color, person
  doing the teaching
• Can recall someones name when they are sitting
  in their seat in the classroom pass them on the
  street and Im in trouble
• How do you fix this?

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Correcting Overselectivity

• Control has to be transferred over to the
  critical features of the SD
• Alternate trials involving single components of
  the complex stimulus with trials containing the
  intact complex stimulus

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Stimulus Control Research focusing on Techniques
that are Designed to Fade Adult Prompts very
Rapidly (Green, 2001)

• Activity Schedules
• (MacDuff, Krantz McClannahan, 1993)
• Independent/ skills leisure skills
• Script/script fading procedures
• (Krantz McClannahan, 1998) (Stevenson, Krantz
  McClannahn, 2000)
• Textual or audio prompts
• Words embedded in an activity schedule
• Initiate and respond to verbal statements
• Tactile Prompts
• (Taylor Levin, 1998)
• Verbal initiations

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Stimulus Control Research focusing on Techniques
that are Designed to Fade Adult Prompts very
Rapidly (Green, 2001)

• Video Modeling
• (Charlop Milstein, 1989) (Reeve, et al., 2007)
• Purchasing skills, helping skills
• Lots of additonal research questions
• Priming
• (Schreibman, Whalen Stahmer, 2000)
• Decreasing disruptive behavior
• Lots of additional research questions
• Incidental Teaching or Naturalistic Techniques
  Natural Language Paradgm
• (Hart Risley, 1968) (Koegel, 1995)
• Verbal initiations