Prompting is presenting a stimulus to assist the child in producing the targeted response after a given discrimitative stimulus.

Some children become quickly dependent on prompts, unfortunately, and wait for the adult to provide that prompt before they make any type of response. Consequently, prompting should be faded as soon as possible. That is, the prompting should be gradually diminished until the child is doing performing the behavior on his own.

Types of Prompts

There are five basic varieties of prompts:

Verbal prompting is the providing of a verbal instruction, cue, or model, or overemphasizing the correct word in an array of choices. A full verbal prompt might involve the adult saying the entire word or phrase that he is trying to illicit from the child, whereas a partial verbal prompt might be providing only the first sound or syllable to cue the child to proceed.

Modeling is the acting out of the target behavior by the adult or another child with the hope that the child will imitate.

Physical prompting involves actually touching the child. A full physical prompt might involve moving the child through the entirety of the behavior (for example, guiding his hand to select the right card from an array, and then guiding it further to hand the card to the adult). A partial physical prompt might be just touching a hand or shoulder to get the child started on the behavior.

Gestural prompting includes pointing to, looking at, moving, or touching an item or area to indicate a correct response.

Positional prompting involves arranging the materials of the trial so that the correct item is in a position advantageous to the child. For example, if a trial consists of picking a picture of a named object from a group of three pictures, one might initially arrange the trial so that the correct choice is directly in front of the child, while the two incorrect choices are on the other side of the table. As the child progresses, the other cards can be gradually moved closer until they are even with the correct choice.

The final section will focus on Teaching Complex Behaviors.

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