Prompts can be equally useful for helping people both with and without Autism. Have you ever pointed your finger to direct a person in the right direction? If so, you’ve prompted someone. Have you ever used an alarm clock to wake up? Then you have prompted yourself!
Lynn McClannahan and Patricia Krantz of Princeton Child Development Institute describe prompts as: “Instructions, gestures, demonstrations, touches, or other things that we arrange or do to increase the likelihood that children will make correct responses.” When done correctly, prompting increases the rate of responding while lowering frustration, and helping the individual learn more efficiently. If your friend didn't know how to bake, you wouldn't give them a demand like "make me a cake" and then just stand back and watch them struggle. Practicing errors impedes learning. You would step in and help them succeed. This same idea is used in ABA therapy with prompts.
Prompting is utilized in many ways during an ABA session , some of which are described below:
1. Gestural prompt- Pointing, nodding or any other type of action the child can watch the clinician do.
Example: Pointing at an animal to make the child say cow.
2. Full physical prompt/Hand Over Hand (HOH)- Leading the child by the hand, or physically moving a child to guide them through the entire activity.
3. Partial physical prompt- The clinician provides only some assistance to guide the child through part of the requested activity.
4. Full verbal prompt- The clinician verbally models what the desired response of the child is.
Example:“What is that toy?"
"Say, block”
5. Partial verbal prompt- The clinician provides the child with part of the response to the question asked or just says the first word or sound.
Example: “What is that toy? Say, bl...”
6. Visual prompt- A video, photograph or drawing on a medium like paper, a whiteboard, or an electronic device.
Example: Clinician asks the child to “Clap your hands.”
Clinician prompts the child by playing a video of a person clapping his hands.
7. Auditory prompt- like an alarm or timer.
Example: Clinician asks the child to, “Clean up your toys in 5 minutes.”
Clinician prompts the child by setting a timer to go off in 5 minutes.
Ultimately prompts can become crutches; they’re a kind of artificial support. So, while prompts are a useful tool in teaching and the first step in helping a child fully learn a skill on his own, it’s important that the child is not always been prompted to perform a task.
Hey Shambhavi!! It's really interesting how we use prompts in our lives everyday but don't really know the importance of them! I was wondering, you said prompts are basically like crutches. I noticed that there are different kinds of prompts, like ones where you help the child out completely (full physical prompt) and ones like the partial verbal prompt, where you don't. Is any one prompt more used and more effective than another one? Or does it just depend on the severity of the condition of the child?
ReplyDeleteGreat question! Usually prompting is placed on a hierarchy. This provides a framework for clinicians to direct the client’s learning and level of independence. During the first stages of teaching a new skill, clinicians use “most to least prompting”. This is done by using the types of prompting that require the most support and then systematically fading down to ones that require less support. The order from most to least severe usually is full physical prompt, partial physical prompt, modeling (showing how to do the task), gesture and then the verbal prompts (both full and partial).
DeleteEventually, after a skill has been learned, “least to most prompting” (in reverse order or has desired depending on the client) is used to work towards the mastery of the skill and independent use.