ABA therapy is one of the most common and ideal treatments for children with Autism, as well as other developmental disorders. Numerous children with Autism may also be trained with Pivotal Response Training (PRT) by encouraging a set of behaviors in those children.
This article is going to focus on Pivotal Response Training, what it actually is, and the connection between PRT and ABA therapy.
What is Pivotal Response Training?
A Pivotal Response Training (PRT) is aimed at children who have Autism, or other common developmental disorders.
PRT is commonly used by Chicago ABA therapists to help children learn and analyze their behaviors. In simple words, PRT is a more naturalistic form of ABA therapy.
In most cases, PRT is introduced in the earliest intervention. Moreover, the PRT therapist basically makes use of self-initiated play with the child. In order to effectively socialize and communicate with them.
Besides that, PRT is also used in ABA therapies in order to reduce problematic and undesirable behaviors. Which are seen as socially inappropriate.
Such behaviors are most disruptive when the child tries socializing and communicating with other people, especially peers. For example, some self-stimulatory or disruptive behaviors include symptoms including flapping arms uncontrollably when angry, shouting, and so on.
Moreover, socially inappropriate behaviors are also targeted in PRT, which includes the inability to interact with other peers in society, getting distracted easily, not being able to concentrate, and so on.
Therefore, PRT therapists make use of 4 of the most important pivotal areas to help eliminate these undesirable and problematic behaviors for good, and to replace those with more socially acceptable ones, which include responding to several cues, motivation, interaction with others in society, and most importantly, self-management.
PRT encourages children to improve in the four broad pivotal areas (response to multiple cues, social interaction initiation, motivation, and self-management). These skills are considered pivotal because they are the foundational skills upon which learners with ASD can make widespread and generalized improvements in many other areas.
The connection between Pivotal Response Training and ABA therapy:
Pivotal Response Training, an approach to ABA therapy, was first developed by Dr. Robert L. Koegel and Dr. Lynn Kern Koegel during the 1970s.
Pivotal response training is a way of applying the same principles used in ABA therapy in order to teach children with Autism certain skills and behaviors, and also eliminate undesirable and problematic behaviors. However, the only difference is that such behaviors and skills are taught to children in a rather naturalistic environment and format.
If we talk about Pivotal response training, it is more of a drill. However, it is also more flexible, versatile, and more motivating for the children.
The reason for this motivation is that PRT includes a variety of tasks, which is a great motivator for children. The children stay engaged in the therapy, and they also gain more confidence as the tasks keep rotating. And they don’t usually get demotivated and disheartened by the hard tasks.
Positive Reinforcement
Another crucial aspect of PRT is positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is not only given to children in training or therapy when they’ve successfully completed a specific task. Rather, they are given positive reinforcement, or reward, just for trying to produce the desired result. Therefore, it is imperative to give positive reinforcements to children just for trying, even if they fail.
When we talk about playtime in PRT, it is not really structured. PRT in ABA therapy is the least structured type of training or therapy, as the children are allowed to take initiative themselves.
The children in PRT are given full freedom for taking the therapy or training anywhere they want to, they are allowed to guide all the sessions and are also allowed to choose what they want to do first.
By giving this sort of freedom to children, ABA therapists believe that children are more engaged and motivated in the training. In addition, they are also more eager to learn new skills and complete more tasks as they are choosing what they want to do. Children are more curious this way, and have that desire and urge to change themselves, by seeing the fruitful benefits of such behaviors and learning specific skills themselves.
Pivotal Response Training is also ideal for parents and teachers as well. This is because PRT does not require any structure. And there is no need to design particular drills or even practices to teach children specific skills and behaviors.
How Pivotal Response Training works
In Pivotal Response Training, the therapist aims at the child’s ‘pivotal’ points. Rather than focusing on a more broad range of interactions. For instance, a few of those pivotal areas are:
- Socializing skills, including speech skills, language skills, etc
- Social interactions, and how to initiate conversations
- Increasing positive social behaviors
- Self-management and self-regulation
- How to respond to numerous cues in a single time
When we talk about the ultimate goals of Pivotal Response Training, they are to:
- Enhance children’s communication and language skills
- Promote interactions with others in the society, as well as maintaining relationships
- Eliminate problematic and undesirable behaviors
- Increase the interests of children
- Improve children’s performance in and out of school
Therefore, when such specific areas of development are targeted by therapists, positive change occurs. These ultimately lead to widespread improvement in children.
It is also important to note that motivation strategies are highly crucial in PRT training. In order to motivate those children in therapy, Pivotal Response Training is generally play-based.
Thus, the therapist allows the child to initiate activities and play by themselves, for instance, deciding what games to play, what to talk about, or what to learn. Therefore, children initiate play on their own and are given natural reinforcers that are relevant to the current situation, such as asking for a stuffed animal in a socially acceptable and desirable way and then being handed the toy as a reward.
Moreover, the reward should be the toy itself, nothing else. Thus, children must be rewarded for trying to make a fair attempt, even if the child was not completely successful.
