Assessment to identify learner-specific prompt and prompt-fading procedures for children with autism spectrum disorder.

Few studies have evaluated the use of assessment to identify the most efficient instructional practices for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. This is problematic as these individuals often have difficulty acquiring skills, and the procedures that may be efficient with one individual may not be for others. The experimenters conducted instructional assessments to identify the most efficient prompt type (model, partial physical, full physical) and prompt-fading procedure (progressive delay, most-to-least, least-to-most) for teaching auditory-visual conditional discriminations for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Each assessment was conducted at least twice, and a final generality test combined the most and the least efficient prompt type and prompt-fading procedure for teaching novel auditory-visual conditional discriminations. The results demonstrated learner-specific outcomes for the prompt type assessment, whereas the least-to-most prompt fading procedure was most efficient for all participants.