 Hey everybody, welcome back. It's Veronica Howard. So we're continuing in our discussion of these antecedents. Demuli, we're talking about prompts. What I want to talk to you about today are the specific use of prompts in a procedure called programming and in one that's called fading. Now it is worth noting that these terms are a little bit archaic. They're incredibly specific to an older generation of behavior analysts and folks who work in the experimental analysis of behavior. So bear in mind that these terms are going to be a little bit infrequently used in clinical practice. But I think that they're still really valuable because we have to have an idea of how we want to use prompts so that we know how we're using them best. Now remember Miller says that programming is the temporary use of a prompt. That's important. Temporary is important so we don't have prompt dependence. Programming is the temporary use of a prompt to establish a generalization. So it's like generalization training plus prompting. Now programming is super, super useful when you're trying to teach concepts or stimulus classes such as those that are taught in this class. And so this is why your particular textbook uses programming. Let me give you an example. Now we've shown this before. We have this paradigm of where we're trying to teach a person how to label all of the items in this stimulus class appropriately. So if I present them with the image here of the fruit on the left in the presence of that stimulus, if the behavior is under stimulus control and I say, what's this? And I present the stimulus on the left. Then if the behavior is under stimulus control, they should say apple. And if they say apple, then I deliver the reinforcer because remember, if behavior doesn't occur, if it's not reinforced it's not going to continue to occur. If I present them with the next stimulus and I see no response, if they don't naturally emit that response or if they don't emit that response under stimulus control, I know that they don't have that generalized repertoire. They don't recognize that these two stimuli fall into the same stimulus class. And so if I present this green apple and I say what is it and there's no response, generalization has not occurred. What I can do to increase the probability of their response is to give them a little hint, right? Give them a little prompt. So I'm going to use a verbal prompt and I'm going to say eh, right? Because the first letter of that is of apple is eh. It starts with eh. And then if they emit the response apple, yes, deliver the reinforcer. So I can present the next stimulus and if they don't get it, I can give them again just a little verbal prompt eh. And if they emit the response apple, reinforce it. And again, even this highly archaic image here, we all know that this shape resembles an, and of course this is a video so that I know that you haven't responded, but if you were my client, you haven't responded, I'll give you a little verbal prompt. And then when you say apple, I'll deliver the reinforcer. Now in this particular case, what I've done here, I'm adding in a verbal prompt when and only when the behavior doesn't occur naturally on its own. I'm waiting to see if I need that prompt because I'm trying to make sure that I don't get prompt dependence. And notice that I'm using the prompt because all of these stimuli fall into the same stimulus class. I'm trying to teach a generalized naming response to the, the stimuli that are in this class. So I'm using that prompt to foster a generalization. And when you have generalization training plus prompting, that's programming. When we talk about fading, this term is used in a couple of different ways. Miller talks about it in terms of the temporary use, and again temporary because we don't want to foster prompt dependence, the temporary use of a prompt to establish a discrimination or a tight, excuse me, a tightening of that stimulus control. It is worth noting also that in clinical practice, you'll sometimes hear folks say fading in terms of removing the prompt, which is good because you do eventually want to remove those prompts, but it's sometimes used to describe the removal of that temporary prompt. Fading can sometimes incorrectly be used by clinicians to refer to the leaning of a schedule of reinforcement. So be careful here with language. When Miller is talking about fading, he's referring to the temporary use of the prompt to establish discrimination or delineation between concepts or ideas or stimuli. In this case, you're familiar with this paradigm. We've used this before. You've got apples and oranges. In this case, we're naming the apple. The apple is the sd for the verbal response apple. And if the naming response occurs in the presence of that stimulus, if they say if our learner says apple, great, deliver the reinforcer. However, if when presented with the stimulus on the right, when presented with the orange, if our learner says apple, you don't deliver the reinforcer. This is simple discrimination training. The difficulty can be if we're presenting the stimulus on the left, and there's no response. So we have no behavior occurring here. So we might have to add on an additional prompt. So in the case of this, we might give the verbal prompt add. And then when our learner says apple, deliver the reinforcer. But same again here. If they call this apple, do not deliver the reinforcer. So we're talking about the temporary use of a stimulus to establish a discrimination. Now remember, we have to remove that additional prompt. So in my subsequent trials, maybe at first I'm saying ah. And the next time we come in, I'm going to deliver the same kind of approach. I'm going to present the stimulus, and I'm going to give the prompt again if the response doesn't occur naturally. But maybe this time, rather than going ah, I'm going to go ah. It's a little softer, right? So a softer verbal prompt, and when the response occurs, reinforce it. Again, third trial, we're going to deliver that same stimulus, even softer. Ah, right. Then when the behavior occurs, you reinforce it. This is the process of eventually removing that so that when you get to subsequent trials, you present the stimulus way to beat, wait a second, see if the learner can emit the response on their own. Because if they emit it independently, yes, deliver that reinforcer. You have to eventually have a plan for how you're going to be moving those prompts out. Check, just take a second, take a breath, be patient, see if the response can occur on its own. Don't rush to give that prompt because you don't want to foster prompt dependence. And again, it's so easy because we're so busy, our client's lives are busy, we're very busy, got a ton of things to do. But prompt dependence can be pretty hard to break. So check and see if the additional prompt, if the additional antecedent stimulus is necessary by presenting the SD, and then just wait a second, wait a beat. You may find that if you're working in clinical practice, there will actually be programmed instructions for how to do that. It'll say we're going to do prompt fading, you're going to deliver the immediate verbal stimulus, and you're going to wait one second and two seconds and three seconds and so on. So you'll need to have a plan for how you're going to remove it. Remember in summary, when we're talking about programming, we are talking about using an additional antecedent stimulus, a temporary prompt to help foster generalization. So it's often used in generalization training. When Miller refers to fading, we're talking about the use of that additional prompt for the purposes of fostering and discrimination. We want to increase the probability of the response only in the presence of specific target antecedent stimuli, not to broaden. The term fading can often be loosely used or sometimes misused in clinical practice. So when you hear people talk about fading, if you hear that word, ask them, what do they mean by that? All right, if you have any questions, let me know. But it's been great to talk to you. I'll see you next time.