What are Prompts?

 

 

Prompts (Billingsley & Romer, 1983; Snell, 1983a) are supplementary stimuli used to increase the likelihood that a student will emit a correct response in the presence of the SD (instruction), which will eventually control the behavior.  Prompts are given before or during the performance of a behavior; they help behavior occur so that the teacher can provide reinforcement.   

 Some examples of prompts:

 

• verbal prompts/verbal directions
• modeling (modeling the behavior for the student so that it can be imitated)
• physical guidance (student bodily assisted through an action)
• movement cues (gesturing, looking at, touching the correct response)
• positional cues (positioning the correct choice closer to the student)
• redundancy cues (when one or more stimulus/response dimensions are paired with the correct choice (i.e. changing the color, size, or shape of the target item).