Efficiency and Child Preference for Specific Prompting Procedures

Abstract

Prompting procedures are often used for teaching discrete skills, but limited comparative data exist to help guide practitioners to select a specific procedure for a given child. Chazin and Ledford (Journal of Behavioral Education 30:684–707, 2021) asserted that comparisons were needed in contexts where participants had prerequisite skills required for all procedures and could differentiate between procedural variations (e.g., understood when to use which strategy). In this study, we used adapted alternating treatments designs to assess the efficiency of constant time delay and system of least prompts when teaching expressive and receptive identification of discrete targets to young children who (a) could wait for a prompt and (b) demonstrate the ability to determine when they should wait for assistance or make a guess. We also used a simultaneous treatments procedure to evaluate preference for one procedure relative to the other. Both procedures were effective for teaching young children discrete skills. Preference results were variable across participants, but consistent across time (i.e., once participants were exposed to both contingencies their preference for one remained relatively consistent over time). Implications for practice and future research are discussed.