Mini Training Series: Ep 27 Three Ways to Fade Prompts

Hi, this is Sasha from The Autism Helper, and in this episode of the mini video training series, I'm going to talk about 3 ways to fade prompts. So prompts kind of get a bad rap in the special ed world. We're all very worried about creating learners that are prompt dependent, which means they rely on our prompts, and I agree, we should definitely be worried about that. But prompts are just a teaching tool. We all need prompts. We all use prompts. There's prompts in our world that we use on a regular basis. Maybe the last time you got in your car and started driving, you forgot to put your seatbelt on. Well, what prompt happens shortly after in most cars? Starts beeping, right? That's a prompt to remind you to put on your seatbelts because the natural cue of getting in your car and starting to drive wasn't enough. You needed help. So that's what prompts are. Prompts are something that are added to the environment to help you engage in the right behavior because the natural cue was not specific enough to help you. You needed more. So think about a learner that's learning how to go to the bathroom by himself. So he finishes going to the bathroom, that's the natural cue to flush the toilet, right? We finish going to the bathroom, the natural cue when you're done is to flush. But if your learner doesn't flush the toilet, we add a prompt saying, "Johnny, flush the toilet." and then he flushes the toilet. So you saying, "Johnny, flush the toilet," was a prompt that encouraged him to engage in the appropriate behavior of flushing the toilet. So prompts are important, but just as important as prompts are, planning for fading prompts is equally important because we don't want our kids to rely on us to always tell them what they need to do. We want them to do it on their own. So when it comes to prompt fading, we want to plan for it, not just assume that that it will naturally happen. If you've been in that situation where you've started engaging in some prompts with a student and just, "Oh, it'll eventually go away," then that might be a situation where a kid becomes prompt dependent because we don't plan for removal of the prompts, we just keep giving them. Another thing we wanna consider with prompt fading is training your staff. This has to be a team endeavor. Some of the hardest working paraprofessionals I know who are truly amazing at their job are notorious over-prompters because they're just busy bees. They're just doing stuff and they don't realize they're actually over-prompting a student. The prompt fading process needs to be gradual. It's not Monday I'm starting with hand over hand, by Friday you better be doing it on your own. It needs to be a gradual process. During this prompt fading process, if you start seeing some incorrect responding, it's okay. You just go back to that last prompting level where the student was successful. So the first prompt fading system that we're gonna talk about is least to most prompts. This is a way a lot of us naturally give prompts. So that means that we start with the least intrusive prompt. So maybe pointing to the right answer or pointing to where the toilet flush, you know, the toilet flush button is. And then we gradually move until the learner's successful throughout that prompt hierarchy to more and more intrusive prompts. So let's say with the toilet flushing example, Johnny finishes going to the bathroom, we point to the flush button. If he doesn't flush the toilet, then we tell him, "Johnny, flush the toilet." If he still doesn't flush the toilet, maybe you move his hand over by the flush. If he still doesn't flush the toilet, then you do hand over hand have him flush the toilet. So you engage in more and more intrusive prompts until the learner is successful. So this is a way a lot of us naturally provide prompts. It allows the student to be as independent as possible, and it allows us to give the least amount of prompts necessary. If Johnny flushed the toilet when we just told him to do it, we wouldn't have had to go to hand over hand. So it's a nice way to give the student as much independence as they can. This type of prompt system, when planned for, can really be self-fading because as the student starts to learn the skill, we're gonna naturally end at less and less level of prompts. So once Johnny starts to learn to flush the toilet, if he needed that hand-over-hand assistance, as we go up through that prompt hierarchy, we're gonna go land at less and less intrusive prompts as time goes on as he learns that skill. But it's something you want to be aware of because you don't always want to stay at that or jump to that most intrusive prompt. So you want to collect data to ensure that you're not sticking with one type. You want to really plan for this. You want to see where the student's being successful and And you want to provide high-powered reinforcement when the student gets to kind of a less prompt, a prompt level that's less than what they needed the day before. So when Johnny, Johnny flushed the toilet just when you point, instead of needing hand over hand, provide a high-powered reinforcer and make a big deal about that. So the second prompt type that we're going to talk about is most to least prompts. So this is exactly the opposite. Don't get confused, I'll explain it. So for most-to-least prompts, it's gonna actually take the opposite approach than we did in the last example. So with most-to-least, we're gonna start with the most intrusive prompts, meaning we're gonna provide the most amount of help that we can right away so that the student is successful. So this is also referred to as errorless learning. We're not giving the chance for the student to make an error. So with the bathroom example, if you pointed to the student to go flush the toilet and they walked over to go wash their hands, that would be an error. But if we went right to that hand-over-hand prompting and had them flush the toilet, they didn't have a chance to make a mistake. So we jumped in right away. For kids that are very routine-based, this can be a nice technique to use because sometimes if kids make a mistake one or two times, then they keep making that mistake. Maybe they put their backpack on the wrong hook and then every day they go to put it on that hook even though their hook is right next door because they're just in that routine. So for some errorless learning or that most to least prompts, we wouldn't wait and see where they put their backpack on the hook. We'd take them right to their correct hook or correct locker right away. So this is important that we don't in our head rename this most to most prompts because sometimes people live here. They live in the most intrusive prompt because they think that's what the child needs. So you really want to plan to gradually lessen the types of prompts that you need. So if Johnny was putting his book bag on the wrong hook, for a while we'd use some airless learning, that most intrusive prompt, bring him over exactly to his hook and show him how to put it on there. But after a while, then we'll start saying, "You have the second hook," then we start pointing to that hook. So we're gonna gradually lessen the types of prompts and the magnitude of prompts prompts that we need over time. So the same kind of best practices apply. You need to plan for this. You want to maybe set a criteria of how many days you're using each type of prompt. You know, maybe we're using a full physical prompt for 5 days, then we're going to use a partial physical prompt for 5 days, then we're going to use a gestural prompt for 5 days. So really plan for that. And then within that prompt type, lessen the magnitude. So if you want Sarah to get her pencil and you're using a partial physical prompt, Maybe a few days, you know, you're moving her hand over, but then you just start moving her wrist or putting her hand there and even start to even just fade to a little bit of a gestural where you push the pencil over and move her hand towards it. So you can even play with the intensity of the prompts within one prompt type. So it's going to be gradual, and if a student starts responding incorrectly, you just go back to the last prompt level that was successful. And again, key is planning for it and taking that data to see where we're at in that planning process. The third type of prompt fading system that we're going to talk about is time delay. Time delay is a really fun one because it really plays with this time interval and gives the student the chance to respond correctly. So with a time delay, you're going to gradually increase the amount of time between that natural cue, so when the behavior should occur, and the prompt that we give. So let's say you hold out Johnny's favorite toy. And that is the natural cue that you want him to ask for the toy. So you hold out Johnny's favorite toy and you want him to say, "I want toy." So with time delay, you're gonna start with 0 seconds. So there's no delay. So you show Johnny his toy and then you model the correct answer. Say, "Johnny, say, 'I want toy.'" And Johnny will say, "I want toy." So it's again, that errorless learning. He doesn't have the chance to get it wrong. You're telling him what to say. So he says, "I want toy," you hand it to him, everyone's happy. So you do the 0 second for a little bit, and then you gradually increase that to 2 seconds, 4 seconds, 10 seconds, etc. So after a few days of 0 seconds, then you'll give that 2 or 3 second pause. So you'll show Johnny the toy and you'll wait and really wait. So 2 seconds is 2 seconds. Don't just jump to the next thing. So count to those 2 seconds in your head and see if he'll say it on his own. And when you've used that most intrusive prompt, that 0-second delay, that immediate response of telling them what to do, a lot of times then our kids respond, right? We, we've done a bunch of days of showing the toy and being like, "I want toy, I want toy," prompting him to say that. That once you pause, a lot of times our kids, and any kids, will say, "Oh yeah, I want toy," 'cause they know what to say. So you gradually lengthen that time delay, giving them more and more time to process and think of the right response. This is really nice for teaching verbal responses because this is a natural way to do it. Give them the right answer and then slowly add in that wait period to give them the opportunity to do it correctly. So again, similar with all of the other prompt fading systems that we've talked about, plan for it, take data. Are you noticing a theme? And really ensure that you're utilizing this procedure the way it's meant to be. So really lengthening gradually over time that wait period. With time delay, the key is that you want to make the reinforcer for unprompted responses way better. So when the child does respond correctly during that time period, so when you show Johnny the toy and you haven't prompted him, you haven't given that verbal prompt of what to say, and he on his own says, "I want toy," You make a big deal about it. Maybe you give him the toy plus the candy and you give him extra time to play with that toy. Versus if you have to wait 4 seconds, he doesn't say anything, and then you say, "I want toy," and Johnny repeats it and says, "I want toy," he's still getting the toy, but we're not adding in any extra reinforcers. So the reinforcement is better for the unprompted responses. So I hope you enjoyed this episode of the mini video training series. Prompt fading is something that is so important, and it's important to think about. I hope that was kind of the general theme throughout this whole video, is it's something that has to be planned for and not just hope that it'll happen on its own, because that's where prompt dependence creeps in. If you want to check out more of our mini video training series, head over to YouTube or theautismhelper.com.