It may be helpful for teachers to slowly decrease prompting when working with students with autism who receive applied behavior analysis (ABA).

This study was designed to see which of two approaches (constant time delay or flexible prompt fading) work best when teaching skills to children with autism. The study had five elementary aged students who received at least 10 hours of ABA therapy per week. The study found that both approaches worked for the students, but that teachers preferred to use flexible prompt fading. The authors noted that they could not be certain that the teachers were doing each procedure the right way. The authors cautioned that future research should look to see which of these procedures might cause children to rely upon the prompt.