An errorless teaching starting prompt should be strong enough to support a correct response while remaining as unobtrusive, accessible, and safe as the learner and skill allow. The clinician considers the natural cue, response form, current skills, error history, prompt intrusiveness, health, consent and assent, staff competence, and fading route. The plan should name the response window and how each prompted response appears in data.
Define the errorless teaching starting prompt
Specify its form, timing, intensity, duration, person delivering it, and exact response it supports. A model, gesture, positional cue, visual, time delay, or physical prompt creates different learning and risk conditions. Stillness or silence never establishes consent to touch.
Start with the natural cue
Write the everyday event that should eventually guide the response. Present it before or with the planned prompt according to the procedure. If the natural cue is ambiguous or inaccessible, stronger prompts can mask that problem. Redesign the cue or environment when appropriate.
Use sources as decision support
The prompting-strategy review organizes learner, task, error, efficiency, and fading considerations. The BACB outline covers prompting and stimulus-control transfer as examination content. The Leaf trial compares specific procedures rather than selecting a starting prompt for all learners.
Keep assent and AAC active
The Ethics Code addresses competence, consent and assent when applicable, risk, and client involvement. The ASHA portal supports continual AAC access. Provide a reliable way to ask for another prompt, more time, or a stop.
A practical example
Keon wants to use a new laundry machine. The natural cue is the lit cycle menu. The plan starts with a visual highlight rather than hand guidance, records any gesture separately, and fades the highlight after the prewritten criterion.
Questions families can use
Why this prompt? Is a less intrusive prompt likely to work? Who may deliver it? What is the wait time? How is consent handled? What exact rule begins fading?
Sources
- Association for Behavior Analysis International, Basic Principles in Behavior Analysis
- Behavior Analyst Certification Board, BCBA Test Content Outline, 6th edition
- Leaf and colleagues, Comparing Error Correction to Errorless Learning: A Randomized Clinical Trial
- A Decision-Making Tool for Evaluating and Selecting Prompting Strategies
- Behavior Analyst Certification Board, Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts
- American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Augmentative and Alternative Communication
Finni resources
