Simultaneous Prompting: An Instructional Strategy for Skill Acquisition

Errorless learning is an instructional approach designed to eliminate and/or reduce the number of errors students produce in traditional trial-and-error approaches (Mueller, Palkovic, & Maynard, 2007). Various response prompting strategies are employed to produce errorless learning. Simultaneous prompting is an errorless learning strategy that has a growing body of literature to support its use spanning two decades. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the literature including (a) skills targeted for instruction, (b) populations targeted for instruction, (c) strengths and weaknesses of simultaneous prompting, and (d) future areas of research. Errorless learning is an instructional ap- proach designed to reduce the number of errors students make in traditional trial-and- error approaches (Mueller, Palkovic, & May- nard, 2007). During errorless learning proce- dures stimulus control is transferred from the controlling prompt to the discriminative stim- ulus. This transfer is achieved through the use of response prompting strategies. Response prompting strategies consist of additional in- formation which results in the correct re- sponse being emitted (Wolery, Ault, & Doyle, 1992). The underlying purpose of errorless learning is the transfer of stimulus control from a response prompt to the natural stimu- lus. Wolery and Gast (1984) identified four common response prompting strategies that commonly are employed to transfer stimulus control: (a) most-to-least prompts, (b) least-to- most prompts, (c) graduated guidance, and (d) time delay. Most-to-least prompts consists of employing the most intrusive prompt needed to assist the student in emitting the correct response and fading the intensity of the prompt until the student is correctly re- sponding to the discriminative stimulus inde- pendently. Least-to-most prompts provide the student with an opportunity to respond inde- pendently to the discriminative stimulus. If the student responds incorrectly a prompt is provided which gradually increases in inten- sity until the student responds correctly to the discriminative stimulus. "Graduated guidance is a technique combining physical guidance and fading in which the physical guidance is systematically and gradually reduced and then faded completely" (Foxx, 1982, p. 129). Grad- uate guidance relies heavily on the teacher's judgment whether or not a prompt is required or the degree of prompt required. There are two forms of graduated guidance. During one form a teacher shadows a student's movement when teaching a task to provide guidance dur- ing each step or to remove the physical prompt. During a second form of graduated guidance the teacher may provide constant contact but gradually and systematically re- duce the intrusiveness and placement of the prompt (Foxx, 1981; Wolery & Gast, 1984). Time delay is the fourth common response prompting strategy which results in near er- rorless learning by transferring stimulus con- trol from a controlling prompt to the discrim- inative stimulus by inserting a delay between the presentation of the discriminative stimu- lus and the controlling prompt (Snell & Gast, 1981; Touchette, 1971). Two forms of time delay are reported in the literature, progres- sive time delay (PTD) and constant time delay (CTD). During PTD a systematically increased