The PIvital Response Treatment: Part 1 by Brian E. Mac Farlane, MA.Ed.

PRT is an intervention or treatment approach derived from the principles of applied behavior analysis (ABA; R. L. Koegel, Openden, Fredeen, & Koegel, 2006). PRT focuses on building a set of four "pivotal" skills or behaviors, including (a) motivation to respond to natural environmental and social cues, (b) responding to multiple (rather than single) cues in the environment, (c) management of own behavior, and (d) self-initiation of behavior in appropriate contexts.

 These are called pivotal behaviors because they are likely to have a positive effect on the learner's acquisition and use of a wider range of developmental or behavior skills than those specifically targeted for the PRT intervention (Coolican, Smith & Bryson, 2010; Smith, Koegel, Koegel, Openden, Fossum, & Bryson, 2010).

 

The 10 core goals of PRT are to:

·         Teach learners to respond to the many learning opportunities and social interactions that occur in the natural environment

·         Decrease learners' needs for constant supervision and support from adults

·         Promote family involvement and improve the quality of life for all family members

·         Decrease the number of services delivered in separate settings that remove learners from the natural environment

·         Improve learners' academic performance

·         Advance learners' communication and language skills

·         Foster learners' social interactions and friendships with typically developing peers

·         Reduce learners' interfering behaviors (e.g., disruptive, repetitive, stereotypical)

·         Move learners toward a typical developmental trajectory by teaching a diverse number of behaviors

·         Broaden learners' interests

 

This approach gives the learner opportunities to make choices and share control of the interactions with adults. The teaching that follows these interactions enhances learners' motivation to engage with objects and activities that maximize the reward strength (i.e., the intrinsic motivating power of the activity or object) and minimize the need for extrinsic reinforcers (e.g., stickers, tokens, edibles).

Why developed?

PRT was developed by Robert Koegel and Laura Schreibman, who arranged teaching settings in which children were allowed to choose materials and activities while adults interspersed teaching opportunities within learning and play activities. Children in these settings learned new skills and maintained those skills over time (Schreibman, 2006). PRT, like all other behavioral teaching approaches (and probably non-behavioral teaching approaches as well), uses the fundamental teaching tools of reinforcement, antecedent control, prompting, fading, shaping, and chaining

The first behavioral interventions for children and youth with ASD successfully used the basic behavioral principles of reinforcement, punishment, and shaping to teach target behaviors such as speech, imitation, following instructions, and reduction of unwanted behaviors (Ferster, 1961; Ferster & DeMyer, 1962).

PRT, like all other behavioral teaching approaches (and probably non-behavioral teaching approaches as well), uses the fundamental teaching tools of reinforcement, antecedent control, prompting, fading, shaping, and chaining. PRT uses both motivational and learning principles and applies them systematically in natural settings to optimize the development of fundamental skills that are pivotal to the development of a wide range of other skills.

PRT is a technique that a wide range of individuals can use, including family members and school staff, as well as individual therapists and consultants (e.g., speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists).

One primary goal of PRT is to promote generalization and maintenance of mastered skills. A successful strategy for addressing this goal is to focus on skill deficits in the natural environment, in as many naturally occurring opportunities as possible, and with multiple intervention partners (National Research Council, 2001). For example, it is much more likely that learners will maintain newly acquired skills, such as buttoning, and generalize to different types of buttons if they button pajamas at night, coats when going outside, or a doll's dress during play-all naturally occurring opportunities that take place throughout the daily routine.

PRT can be implemented in any setting and context where (a) the learner has consistent contact with an individual and (b) there are activities or objects that the learner prefers