Fading

Fading is the process for reducing and removing stimulus or response prompts during instruction. Prompting and fading are companion procedures in instruction. Prompting involves adding antecedent stimuli (i.e., prompts) to the natural cues present during instruction to encourage or assist student responding and to facilitate acquisition of new responses and discriminations. The use of prompts can facilitate learning by assisting the student in the acquisition of stimulus control. However, learned responses ultimately must be controlled by natural cues (antecedent stimuli) rather than by added or artificial cues, such as stimulus or response prompts. Therefore, as instruction continues, prompts added to facilitate acquisition of stimulus control must be removed, or “faded out” of instruction. At the completion of the fading process, only natural cues remain to control responding.

Fading typically occurs gradually to allow for the transfer of stimulus control from the prompts themselves, or from the conjunctive stimuli of prompts plus natural cues, to the natural cues alone. Fading prompts too abruptly or quickly may result in a breakdown in student performance. Fading of prompts frequently involves a systematic process that is often planned from the beginning of instruction. In planning instruction, teachers determine what specific prompts or prompting strategies they may use in teaching a particular student, or group of students (e.g., a class), to perform a targeted response, task, or activity. Prompts should not be added to the instructional context without also planning how those prompts will be faded out of the instructional context by the end of students may continue to require the presence of specific prompts to perform correctly after instruction. This situation occurs because the prompt, not the natural stimulus, continues to control responding. The term prompt bound is sometimes used to describe a student who continues to require a prompt to perform a learned response correctly.

Prompt Hierarchy. The foundation for prompt fading is the construct of a prompt hierarchy. In a prompt hierarchy, prompts are viewed as being hierarchically ordered, based on the level of intrusiveness of specific prompts and combinations of prompts. Within a prompt hierarchy, some prompts and combinations of prompts are seen as more intrusive than others. Fading is a process of shifting from using more intrusive to less intrusive prompts. Typically, the intrusiveness of prompts is judged by the amount of control that the prompt exerts over a student's responding. A prompt may exert control of responding in two ways: the actual physical control of the student's responding that the prompt exerts when delivered by a teacher and the amount and specificity of information that the prompt provides to guide student responding. Some response prompts (for example, a physical prompt, such as hand-over-hand guidance) are highly intrusive because they provide high levels of direct control over students’ responding during instruction.

The amount of direct control over responding that is provided when a teacher delivers a prompt, and therefore the level of intrusiveness of the prompt, varies across different types of prompts. In addition, [Page 1316]within each type of prompt (e.g., physical guidance, gestural, verbal, symbolic, and modeling), specific prompts will vary in the amount and specificity of the information provided to the student. Prompts range from providing high levels of very specific information and assistance to students (high intrusiveness) to providing only very general information and little assistance (low intrusiveness). For example, a very specific verbal prompt (high intrusiveness) in teaching a student to tie a shoe might be “Grab a shoelace in each hand,” while a very general verbal prompt (low intrusiveness) might be “What's next?”

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