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Pivotal Response Treatment and Autism Ranking: Strong positive evidence

Audience

According to Koegel et al (1998), pivotal response treatment is appropriate for

“Individuals with autism and other severe handicaps across a wide variety of ages and functioning levels.”

However, Stahmer (1999) notes that pivotal response treatment may be more appropriate for some children than others when being used to teach play skills.

“Because PRT is very flexible it can be used with children of varying developmental levels. Typically, however, to begin play training a child must firstshow some interest in object manipulation. Additionally, some ability toattend to the environment and at least some capacity for imitation are bothimportant for play training. Children who perform best in this type of training are those children who will interact with toys (regardless of whetherthey do so in an appropriate or inappropriate manner), and who do nothave an extreme amount of self-stimulatory behaviour that does not involve objects (e.g. hand-flapping, rocking). Surprisingly, children who engage in stereotyped play with particular toys or engage in self-stimulatory behaviour with objects areoften excellent candidates for PRT due to the presence of a very powerful reinforcer. “

Updated
17 Jun 2022
Last Review
01 Oct 2016
Next Review
01 Feb 2023