The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

The goal of Pivotal Response Teaching (PRT) is to target critical areas that often separate children with autism from their typical peers. PRT was developed as a result of ABA research which showed that in spite of years of “therapy”, children with autism would continue to have widespread deficits in core areas (Mohammadzaheri, Kern-Koegel, Rezaee, & Rafiee, 2014). “Catching up” was difficult at best, and the gap between children with autism and their typical peers would often widen. Rather than targeting the multitude of skills across diverse areas of child development, PRT targets “pivotal” areas that have been shown to promote broader gains in children to help promote greater inclusion(Burke & Cerniglia, 1990: Vismara & Bogin, 2009).

Perhaps as important as targeting academics, is ensuring that children with autism are prepared to connect, communicate and socially interact with the typical peers as they are transitioned and educated within inclusive classrooms. The PRT approach operationally defines and targets the pivotal skills necessary for inclusive educational settings. Pivotal behaviors have been identified for children including motivation, social use of language, independence, and attention including learning to be an active participant in classroom based group instruction. PRT can be used within small and large groups of identified and non-identified children with a range of needs.

As part of initiating a PRT classroom, teachers can use a preferred task assessment that involves having parents and other familiar adults provide information on what the child enjoys. A preferred task assessment is often a questionnaire that covers a wide variety of activities, materials, and topics. Items on the list are rated as being “highly”, “moderately” or “somewhat” preferred. The incorporation of preferred materials within a session relates to the principle of direct and natural reinforcement, which is a very important aspect of PRT. Unlike other approaches, PRT can readily used within inclusive settings. This session will provide participants with evidenced based practices to help target a range of skills including:

• Motivation to interact and seek connections to others
• Attend and respond to more complex or multi-step instructions
• Social use of language 
• Imitation, joint attention and social referencing
• Independence in academic, social, and self-help areas
• Reciprocal play and social interactions
• Flexibility across routines, activities, topics of discussion, etc.

Though there are several approaches to the education of young children with autism including the Early Start Denver Model (Davlantis, & Rogers, 2016), the PRT Model offers educators a viable approach that can be relatively easy to adapt for their classrooms (Wong, Odom, Hume, Cox, Brock, Plavnick, Schultz, Fettig, & Kucharczyk, 2012). Children involved in the PRT approach have been shown to make robust gains that will ultimately help to ensure broader participation in their lives. As parents and educators, this is the definitive measure of our success. Through this presentation, participants will gain a greater understanding of behavioral assessments that can help define pivotal skills as well as strategies for promoting gains. This content is based on ABA principles.