Description of the Strategy

Pivotal response training is an approach to instruction designed for children with autism that emphasizes attention, motivation, and responsiveness to multiple stimulus cues. Pivotal response training shifts the focus of instruction from traditional curricula composed of many specific skills to pivotal behaviors that affect a wide range of functioning in students with autism. Attention and motivation are among the pivotal behaviors frequently targeted, because competence in these areas is a foundation for success in the majority of learning and social situations. Deficits in attention are characterized by a tendency to respond to restricted and irrelevant cues (e.g., only attending to the color of an object), which can result in repeated experiences of failure. Many think that these repeated experiences ...