ABA 101: Prompting

By Morgan McClellan, Marketing Coordinator

Have you ever heard the word “prompting” used by a Registered Behavior Technician? It is a fundamental part of ABA-based therapy when we’re teaching clients new skills.

“A prompt is an added stimulus that ensures success,” says BCBA Megan Prickel in our latest training video.

Clients may need physical prompts to help teach them a skill, such as the two-step motor imitation. An example of this may be modeling the motor imitation, and then having the client copy the correct behavior afterwards. Clients may also need verbal prompting. An example of this may be giving a full verbal prompt while holding up a picture of a car by saying to the client, “What is this? Car!”

When we’re prompting a client through a new skill, we move down the hierarchy from most to least intrusive prompt levels in order to slowly fade the prompting required to elicit the response. This helps our clients gain independence, which is one of our ultimate goals in ABA-based therapy!

Learn more about the different prompting levels by watching our training video here.

Last updated by Morgan McClellan at September 19, 2019.