Many kids with autism or signs of autism are prompt dependent. But it’s not the child’s fault as prompt dependency is caused by well-meaning adults who are trying to help the child gain skills, but not necessarily fading prompts quick enough. This can be really detrimental to a child’s independence so today I am going to talk about prompt fading.
When Lucas was three, he was in a typical toddler preschool classroom, two mornings a week to supplement his 40 hour a week home ABA program. When he was in this classroom, he was evaluated by a psychologist and a big thing stood out in the report that the psychologist did. She said Lucas was prompt dependent. When a direction was given such as to put on a smock for painting or to clean up his toys, Lucas’ one-to-one ABA therapist or one of the teachers would help or prompt him.
Lucas couldn’t complete this task of putting on the smock independently and they would physically have to help Lucas, but he also wasn’t able to dress himself yet. With toys, they might point to the pile of toys to clean up or sing a cleanup song to get him to participate after the direction was given to clean up the toys.
Now, back then when Lucas was three, I wasn’t a behavior analyst and I didn’t know much about prompts or prompt fading, but that report by the psychologist made me angry. Even back then, I knew that prompt dependency was not a child problem. It was and is caused by teachers and well-meaning parents like me, who did not know how to fade prompts.
I’ve spent the last two decades developing procedures to teach kids skills and to teach adults how to effectively fade prompts. Helping kids learn new skills can be hard. And as parents and professionals, we want to help our kids succeed. So we frequently offer prompts or help when we think they may need them.
We need to know how to use prompt fading to make sure kids don’t become prompt dependent. The first step is an assessment of your child’s or client’s skills. What skills are truly independent and what skills are not solid and require prompting? My one page Turn Autism Around Assessment Form is a great start. It will take you less than 10 minutes to complete and will help you learn whether your child can truly do things independently without prompts.
If you say “touch head,” does he touch his head or do you have to give them a prompt and touch your own head? Do you have to sing the Barney song so that he touches his head in a sing-song manner? These are all prompts that need to be detected so that you know what prompts have to be faded.
We also have to think about our child’s age or our client’s age, because a three-year-old needing some help getting a painting smock on like Lucas did is not that unusual. But a three-year-old that needs prompting to speak or to follow one-step directions is much more of a concern.
A prompt is used when a child needs help to complete a task. It can be a physical prompt to help them put their socks on, or it can be an echoic prompt, like saying “cookie” to get the child to say cookie. Or saying “cuh,” as a partial echoic prompt. Prompts can be physical, or the can be vocal. They can also be gestural like Lucas’ therapist used to point to the toys, that’s called a gestural prompt.
We can’t consider a skill truly mastered until the prompts are faded. So in addition to assessing the child’s skills and needs, it is also important for you to assess your prompts and see which ones can be faded now, and which ones you’ll plan to fade in the future.
One of the big ways to work on prompt fading is to learn about transfer trials. Back in 2005, I published a study on this important procedure that I learned about when Lucas was six years old, right before I became a behavior analyst.
But the transfer trial is critical. So right after he says pretzel, I did a transfer trial and tried to get that response more independent by using another prompt. I would say “what do you want?” or “tell me again?” Or I would just hold up the pretzel and then hold it back and see if he said pretzel again.
If that doesn’t happen, you could also use a partial echoic prompt as a transfer. So say pretzel, and then when he says pretzel, say “Good. Tell me again.” Even start saying it, “pre.” And then when he says pretzel, he gets it on that partial echoic prompt. That is a transfer trial.
You can also use transfer procedures across every operant and skill. So if you’re not using transfer procedures, I urge you to learn more. This is the number one secret to fading prompts.
At the end of the day, we all want our children and clients to be as independent as possible. We need to prompt them to help them learn. But we also need to be mindful of how we are fading our prompts. Making sure that a child has an appropriate assessment, is working on appropriate goals, and their teacher is using transfer procedures in teaching will help reduce the likelihood that your child or client will become prompt dependent.
