A comparison of staff training procedures to teach flexible prompt fading
Classic BST and a progressive decision-making version both teach staff to fade prompts flexibly with learners with autism.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Arthur et al. (2024) compared two ways to teach staff how to fade prompts.
One way was classic behavioral skills training: tell, show, practice, feedback.
The other way added a progressive twist: staff practiced making quick prompt choices while watching real learners with autism.
Both groups had to reach mastery on flexible prompt fading.
What they found
Both training styles worked. Staff in each group learned to drop prompts at the right speed.
Learners with autism kept making correct responses as prompts faded.
No clear winner emerged; you can pick either package and still get good prompt fading.
How this fits with other research
Schnell et al. (2020) showed that a five-minute test can tell you which prompt type is fastest for each child. Arthur’s staff training builds on that idea: once you know the best prompt, you still need to know when to pull it away.
Falligant et al. (2025) added brief in-situ feedback to group BST and found most staff needed the extra coaching to reach mastery. Arthur did not add in-situ feedback, yet staff still hit mastery. The difference is the skill being taught: Falligant aimed for incidental teaching during busy class routines, while Arthur targeted clear prompt-fading rules that are easier to practice in a training room.
Hassan et al. (2018) warned that caregivers who only received BST in clinic failed to use the skills at home until in-situ training was added. Arthur’s study seems to contradict this, but the tasks differ. Prompt fading follows a visible rule set, so generalization may occur without extra in-situ coaching, whereas naturalistic social coaching is more context bound.
Why it matters
You now have two ready-made staff-training scripts for prompt fading. If you need to train many staff quickly, use the classic BST script. If you want staff to practice on-the-spot decisions, use the progressive script. Either way, you can skip extra in-situ feedback for this skill, saving time and money.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
AbstractQuality behavior intervention requires critical thinking skills, in‐the‐moment analysis, flexibility, and clinical judgment. Yet, there has been limited research on developing these complex skills. Flexible prompt fading (FPF) is a prompting procedure that requires the interventionist to continually analyze learner responding and make in‐the‐moment decisions to maximize learning during the teaching session, ultimately using clinical judgment while using prompting as a teaching strategy. FPF has consistently been demonstrated to be effective and in some cases more efficient than other prompting procedures. However, there has been no research demonstrating effective training procedures for the skills necessary to implement FPF. In order to more widely disseminate procedures that require these analytic skills, effective training procedures must be identified. The current study evaluated the effects of behavioral skills training (BST) and a progressive approach to staff training to teach staff to implement FPF with autistic individuals/individuals with ASD and the effects of each training method on development of clinical judgment skills. The results demonstrated that both training procedures were effective in teaching implementation of FPF.
Behavioral Interventions, 2024 · doi:10.1002/bin.2061