An important distinction between stimulus prompts and other changes to materials are their temporary use. If the change to the item is permanent, then stimulus prompting would not have been used. For example, if a client has difficulty feeding himself with utensils due to deficits in fine motor skills, using a utensil with a greater circumference might increase independence but if the circumference of the utensil is not reduced over time, then it would not be an example of a stimulus prompt.
Although the technical description of stimulus prompts may appear complex, it does not mean the strategy can only be used in highly structured teaching trials. In fact, the strategy can be incorporated into common day-to-day tasks. In the following section, we provide a less formal description of stimulus prompts.
Layman’s Definition
Stimulus prompts are signs or signals temporally added to items to increase the chances a learner will complete a task correctly. For example, a teenager is learning how to cook and frequently over-cooks or under-cooks items when the recipe cooks items for different times.
To increase the likelihood that each item will be cooked correctly, the parent can draw attention to each item’s time with different colored erasable highlighters. The figure below provides an example of how this might look.