Evaluation of the effectiveness and efficiency of two stimulus prompt strategies with severely handicapped students.
Data-driven prompt selection cuts teaching trials without losing effectiveness when training daily living skills with severely handicapped students.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with six students who had severe intellectual disability.
They compared two prompting packages for teaching daily living skills.
One package used the classic least-to-most prompt sequence.
The other package used a prescriptive sequence that changed based on the learner’s data.
The teachers ran discrete trials until each student reached mastery.
What they found
Both prompting packages produced full skill acquisition.
The prescriptive, data-driven sequence reached mastery in fewer trials.
Students learned the same skills with less teaching time.
How this fits with other research
Green et al. (1987) reviewed delayed prompting the same year.
Their review shows delayed prompting is also efficient, but they warn that maintenance data are scarce.
Petit-Frere et al. (2021) later extended the least-to-most idea by embedding it in behavioral skills training to teach poison safety to autistic children.
Hattier et al. (2011) conceptually replicated the timing question.
They found that embedded prompts can accidentally punish play in preschoolers, reminding us that prompt timing matters.
Why it matters
You can cut teaching time without losing effectiveness.
Track each learner’s prompt data during the first few trials.
If a student always needs the second prompt, start there instead of the usual first prompt.
This small shift can save minutes every session and reduce student frustration.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Start each new skill with a quick probe of three prompts; use the lowest one that works as your first prompt in the next trial.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
In this study we compared the effectiveness and efficiency of two treatment packages that used stimulus prompt sequences and task analyses for teaching community living skills to severely handicapped students. Four severely and multiply handicapped students were trained to perform four tasks: (a) making toast, (b) making popcorn, (c) operating a clothes dryer, and (d) operating a washing machine. Following baseline, each student was exposed to two types of training procedures, each involving a task analysis of the target behavior. Training Procedure 1 (Traditional) utilized a least-to-most restrictive prompt sequence. Training Procedure 2 (Prescriptive) utilized ongoing behavioral assessment data to identify discriminative stimuli. The assessment data were used to prescribe instructional prompts across successive training trials. Performance on the tasks was evaluated within a combination multiple baseline (across subjects) and probe (across tasks) design. Training conditions were counterbalanced across subjects and tasks. Results indicated that both training procedures were equally effective in increasing independent task acquisition for subjects on all tasks; however, the prescriptive procedure was the more efficient procedure.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1987 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1987.20-293