The paper discusses guidelines for devising a hierarchy when fading response prompts. Existing guidelines are reviewed. It is suggested that they are poorly defined and inconsistent, and that they lack theoretical and experimental support. An alternative theoretical account is proposed. This suggests that the prompts in a hierarchy should progressively reduce the amount of information provided. A number of other guidelines are also offered. Some experimental support for these proposed guidelines is described. Finally, their relationship to existing guidelines is discussed.
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