- Applied Behavior Analysis Prompting and Fading Procedures Questions and Answers Flashcards

A practitioner is teaching a client to identify the letter 'B' using a most-to-least prompting hierarchy. After 10 sessions, the client consistently responds correctly only when a full physical prompt is provided and shows no movement toward independence. Which is the MOST likely explanation and appropriate corrective action?

Answer: Prompt dependency has developed; the practitioner should insert an errorless learning pause before each trial and immediately thin to a less intrusive prompt level

When a client becomes prompt dependent — consistently requiring the highest level of assistance and showing no generalization toward independence — the appropriate response is to actively address the dependency by reducing prompt intrusiveness. Inserting a brief pause (latency) before delivering the prompt and immediately moving to a less intrusive prompt level leverages stimulus control transfer. Simply maintaining the current prompt while adjusting reinforcement or waiting for accuracy criteria does not address the root issue of prompt dependency, and a preference assessment alone would not resolve a stimulus control problem.

During stimulus fading, a practitioner gradually reduces the size of a visual cue superimposed on a target stimulus. The client begins making errors at the third fading step. According to stimulus fading principles, what is the MOST appropriate immediate response?

Answer: Return to the previous fading step where responding was accurate, then create an intermediate step between that step and the current errorful step

When errors occur during stimulus fading, the practitioner should return to the last successful step (not necessarily step one) to re-establish accurate responding, then create a smaller, intermediate fading step to bridge the gap that caused the error. This minimizes errors while efficiently progressing stimulus control transfer. Continuing forward through errors violates the errorless learning principle underlying stimulus fading, and restarting from step one is unnecessarily disruptive to learned stimulus control.

A BCBA is using a simultaneous prompting procedure to teach a vocational skill. A key feature that distinguishes simultaneous prompting from other prompt systems is that:

Answer: The controlling prompt is delivered simultaneously with the discriminative stimulus on every instructional trial, and probe trials without the prompt are conducted separately to assess stimulus control transfer

Simultaneous prompting presents the controlling prompt at the same moment as the discriminative stimulus on every instructional trial, minimizing errors during instruction. However, probe trials — conducted separately from instructional trials, without any prompt — are essential to assess whether stimulus control has transferred to the discriminative stimulus alone. This separates it from constant time delay (which uses a 0-second delay rather than a truly simultaneous presentation evaluated through probes) and from prompt hierarchies, which vary prompt level based on responding.

A practitioner implements progressive time delay to teach receptive identification. Initially a 0-second delay is used (simultaneous prompt), and the delay is gradually increased to 5 seconds. The client begins to anticipate the prompt at the 3-second delay by responding incorrectly before the prompt is delivered. This pattern is BEST described as:

Answer: A wait-time error, indicating the client's response latency is shorter than the current delay interval, requiring a correction procedure and potentially a step-back in the delay

When a client responds incorrectly before the prompt is delivered during progressive time delay, this is called a 'wait-time error' (or anticipation error). It occurs because the client has not learned to wait the full delay interval for the prompt, or the incorrect response is being inadvertently reinforced. The appropriate response is to implement an error correction procedure (typically an immediate re-presentation with prompt) and consider stepping back to the previous, shorter delay interval. This is distinct from stimulus control transfer, which would manifest as a correct independent response before the prompt.

When comparing within-stimulus prompting to extra-stimulus prompting for teaching a discrimination, which of the following statements MOST accurately reflects an empirically supported distinction that influences procedure selection?

Answer: Extra-stimulus prompting introduces a separate cue that must be faded and may result in failed stimulus control transfer if the learner attends to the prompt cue rather than the relevant features of the target stimulus

A well-documented risk of extra-stimulus prompting (e.g., adding an arrow, color highlight, or gestural cue external to the target) is overselectivity or stimulus blocking — the learner attends to the added prompt cue rather than the relevant defining features of the discriminative stimulus. If fading is not carefully managed, stimulus control may fail to transfer to the target stimulus. Within-stimulus prompting exaggerates the salient features of the target itself (e.g., increasing size or saturation of the relevant dimension), making transfer more likely because the learner must attend to the actual target. Neither approach is universally superior, but the transfer-failure risk associated with extra-stimulus prompting is the key empirical consideration.

A practitioner is fading prompts for a self-care task using a least-to-most prompt hierarchy. The client has reached independence on steps 1–5 of a 10-step task analysis but consistently requires a gestural prompt on step 6 across 15 sessions with no improvement. The MOST appropriate modification, consistent with behavioral principles, is to:

Answer: Conduct a task analysis revision to determine whether step 6 contains multiple behavioral components that should be separated, and apply a within-step shaping procedure to the isolated sub-component

When a learner plateaus at a single step within a task analysis despite extensive intervention, the most behavior-analytically sound first step is to examine whether the task analysis itself is appropriately granular. Step 6 may contain two or more behavioral components that have been lumped into one step, making it an unreasonably large unit of behavior. Breaking it into sub-steps and applying a within-step shaping procedure targets the actual behavioral unit responsible for the breakdown. Switching hierarchies or removing the step addresses surface features without diagnosing the underlying learning unit problem. Increasing reinforcer magnitude would be appropriate for a motivation issue, which is not indicated here.