For me personally, noting we are wired differently, I don't distinguish between a response and thinking. Prompts certainly help with the what will I write about today issue and certainly do help me write when I don't have a subject about which I consciously have been thinking. Yet I think the prompts often connect to sub/unconscious thoughts. From my vantage point, while the jumping off point for a piece may be a response, the creation requires some level of thinking to articulate the response, and my tanka and other poems improved when I would edit rather than go with every word that may have emerged as pure impulse. Also, I will often read a prompt and know that it resonates with me but not write the poem or essay until the next day after I have slept on it and let my sub/unconscious work in it while I sleep.