To compare response prompt and stimulus prompt evidence, define Thea's response prompts that act on the response and stimulus prompts that alter antecedent features. Measure access, intrusiveness, errors, latency, prompt level, fading steps, natural-cue performance, client experience, and transfer. Preserve combined prompting and task changes. Neither prompt family is universally less intrusive, more accessible, or more effective.
Define response prompts
Describe verbal, gestural, model, or physical actions that increase the likelihood or guide the form of Thea's response. Record consent, access, distance, contact, and intensity where relevant.
Define stimulus prompts
Describe changes to position, size, color, contrast, text, icon, sound, texture, or another antecedent feature. Identify the natural feature expected to retain control.
Record combined arrangements
A model plus enlarged feature is a combined prompt. Preserve each component, timing, and fading step instead of assigning one family based on the most visible element.
Compare several outcomes
Measure errors, latency, strongest prompt, teaching trials, natural-cue probes, burden, client preference, and transfer. One accuracy percentage cannot choose a prompt.
Audit access and intrusiveness directly
Assess sensory, motor, language, AAC, privacy, physical-contact, social, and effort effects for Thea. Category labels do not establish acceptability.
Use this sequence to compare response prompt and stimulus prompt evidence
Define Thea's prompt components, match tasks where possible, measure teaching and probe outcomes, audit access and experience, preserve combined control, and select support through a qualified, client-informed decision.
Build Thea's response-and-stimulus-prompt comparison
Create one versioned response-and-stimulus-prompt comparison for the accessible medication-organizer review. Include Thea's priority, natural cue, accessible response, independent window, prompt topography, level, latency, sequence, escalation or fading, consequence, correction, access, health, exposure, planned and delivered prompts, first-response codes, reserved probes, integrity, agreement, invalidity, missingness, withdrawal, direct experience, burden, result, uncertainty, decision, owner, correction, and review trigger. Store only decision-relevant information with role-limited access.
Validate Thea's prompt evidence
Reproduce Thea's 18/20, 17/20, 8/10, and 6/10. Confirm prompt definitions, cue, task materials, exposure, order, latency, errors, fading, consequence, access, and probe separation. Ask Thea about effort, clarity, comfort, and usefulness. Keep teaching performance and reserved natural-cue probes separate. A qualified reviewer should decide whether another comparison adds enough value to justify more exposure. Verify that each fading step changes only the intended prompt feature and retains the natural cue, ordinary supports, and accessible response option.
Keep Thea's prompting, independence, and experience separate
Measure prompt delivery and integrity with due opportunities. Measure independent, prompted, error, correction, and probe performance with their own units. Ask Thea separately about clarity, effort, comfort, usefulness, burden, and whether assessment should continue. Accurate prompting can coexist with poor fit or unwanted control. Better experience can also occur without evidence that fading caused transfer.
Work through Thea's example
Thea completes 20 teaching opportunities with a model response prompt and 20 with an enlarged stimulus feature. Correct prompted performance is 18/20 and 17/20. In separate natural-cue probes, independent responding is 8/10 after the model phase and 6/10 after the enlarged-feature phase. The phases differ in order, materials, and exposure, so the data describe performance without isolating prompt family effects. Preserve every planned and valid unit, raw count, denominator, cue state, response code, prompt topography, level, latency, delivery, correction, access state, integrity result, probe, withdrawal, direct report, system failure, correction, and unresolved item. This fictional example demonstrates one assessment control. It offers no universal prompt hierarchy, independence, mastery, generalization, diagnosis, trait, treatment effect, legal conclusion, coverage decision, payment promise, or outcome guarantee.
Address Thea's main assessment risk
Calling the enlarged feature less intrusive based on its category can ignore visual access, stigma, effort, and Thea's preference. Calling the model more effective from 18/20 versus 17/20 ignores the independent probes and phase differences. Review cue and response definitions, prompt topography, latency, sequence, access, motor and sensory needs, consequence, correction, partner behavior, context, client experience, authority, and causal scope separately. High prompted accuracy cannot repair an inaccessible, burdensome, or ethically unsound arrangement.
Keep prompting concepts and authority clear for Thea
The ABAI Basic Principles page supplies broad higher-education context. The BACB Test Content Outline covers response and stimulus prompts, prompt fading, time delay, stimulus-control transfer, integrity, and evaluation as examination content. The current BACB Ethics Code addresses competence, involvement, consent and assent when applicable, medical needs, risk, data, documentation, and evaluation for covered people. These sources do not create an individualized prompt plan for Thea.
Use individualized prompt selection for Thea
The prompting decision tool organizes variables for evaluating and selecting prompting strategies. It supports explicit attention to skill, task, error history, prompt type, fading, efficiency, and context. It remains an evidence-informed decision aid rather than a universal hierarchy, legal authority, or guaranteed procedure for Thea.
Read small prompting comparisons cautiously for Thea
Libby and colleagues compared most-to-least, least-to-most, and a delayed most-to-least arrangement in small Lego-construction studies. Error and acquisition-speed patterns varied by procedure and participant. The study supplies comparison variables rather than a universal winner or expected outcome for Thea.
Expect task and participant variation for Thea
Fentress and Lerman compared prompting procedures across tasks and reported variation relevant to acquisition and prompt dependence. Narrow samples and tasks limit generalization. For Thea, report the task, natural cue, prompt history, errors, latency, independent probes, access, and client experience directly.
Preserve treatment scope, AAC, assent, and access for Thea
The CASP public summary supplies high-level ABA behavioral-health-treatment scope for autistic people, with licensed detail outside this page. ASHA's AAC portal says AAC users should always have access to their communication tools or devices. Breaux and Smith provide assent-focused guidance in an evolving evidence base. Follow governing sources and preserve communication, health care, food, water, bathroom use, mobility, rest, relationships, safety, and emergency help for Thea. This prompt comparison cannot change medication identity, dose, schedule, dispensing instructions, or container labeling; Thea should route those questions to the prescribing or dispensing professional with authority for the medication.
Choose Thea's next bounded action
Thea chooses the enlarged label with higher contrast and asks the team to keep a brief model available when the organizer changes. Record the qualified owner, supporting evidence, effective date, current supports, health and access state, implementation check, accessible explanation, disagreement route, and reassessment trigger. Preserve the original assessment when cues, responses, people, systems, tasks, or preferences change. A new arrangement creates a dated version rather than an error in Thea's earlier performance.
Close Thea's prompt review
Review the response-and-stimulus-prompt comparison with Thea, the qualified behavior analyst, relevant partners, access owners, and specialists named in the manifest. Confirm that prompted performance stays separate from natural-cue control, teaching and probe denominators are reproducible, AAC and basic access remain protected, health and motor questions stay with qualified professionals, and conclusions remain bounded to the sampled response, prompt, task, people, and context. Keep this page draft and noindex until every required review is complete.
Related resources
- How to Compare Least-to-Most and Most-to-Least Outcomes
- How to Separate Independent, Prompted, and Corrected Responses
- How to Evaluate Time-Delay Prompting Outcomes
- How to Audit Delivered Prompts Against the Teaching Plan
Sources
- Association for Behavior Analysis International, Basic Principles in Behavior Analysis
- Behavior Analyst Certification Board, BCBA Test Content Outline, 6th edition
- Behavior Analyst Certification Board, Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts
- Council of Autism Service Providers, ABA Practice Guidelines Version 3.0 public summary
- Cengher and colleagues, A Decision-Making Tool for Evaluating and Selecting Prompting Strategies
- Libby and colleagues, A Comparison of Most-to-Least and Least-to-Most Prompting
- Fentress and Lerman, A Comparison of Two Prompting Procedures Across Tasks
- Breaux and Smith, Assent in Applied Behaviour Analysis and Positive Behaviour Support
- American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Augmentative and Alternative Communication