Not only do therapist use verbal praise, but token systems can be used as well as stickers and access to toys.

Below is a compilation of various types of reinforcement for older children with autism.

1. High Fives: Therapist can do high fives or high tens. Therapist can do the high five game: “Gimme five..up high..down low…too slow” or play an anticipatory game by pausing before you giving a high five. There are many ways a therapist can give a high five or ten. For example, when the child is going to give you a high five/ten, therapist can quickly close their hand—this becomes the, “see if you can give me a high five/ten” game for the child. A therapist can also act goofy and do “impossible” high fives/tens such as having the therapist’s arms wide out and then having the child try to give the therapist a high five/ten.

2. Thumbs up: A sly way of saying, “good job”

3. Stickers: Find what character the child likes such as Scooby-doo or franklin the turtle and grab loads of stickers for them.

4. Grab Bag: Buy little boxes or bags and fill them up with things the child likes, either food or toys. Examples might be, jewelry, various slime products, stickers, music tapes, arts and craft material etc…

5. Treasure Hunt: Hide some toys for the child and after every program, hunt for all the toys. For children who can read, therapist can make up simple clues for the child to follow.

6. Verbal Praise: Develop YOUR own familiar words like “AWESOME” “SUPER-DEE-DUPER.” Therapist can also say them in various tones. Child will soon learn which therapist says which words.

7. Singing: Have the therapist and child sing a favorite song.

8. Computer Access: For parents who don’t mind, rotate favorite computer games the child likes, and after “X” amount of programs with good behavior, have the child play on computer for 5 or 10 minutes.

9. A +: For good work, write on their paper 100% or A+. At the end of the session tally up the good marks for a toy or favorite snack.

10. Temporary Tattoos: Give each other tattoos. Therapist picks a tattoo for the child and the child picks one for the Therapist. Show the child how to put on a temporary tattoo and then let the child put on one you. Oh, by the way, let the child decide where they want to put the tattoo on the therapist! Don’t be surprised if they decide to put a funny tattoo on Therapist’s face!

11. Pretend You’re A…: For children who like to act out characters or animals, have them take turns deciding what to be. For the next program, pretend to be that character or animal.

12. Crossword Puzzles: Have therapist design their own cross word. “ Word pick” should be based on what the child likes. For example, Disney characters, popular music artists, favorite foods or animals, names of family members/therapists/friends, or pick goofy, funny words. At the end, therapist and child can either make up a story about the words in the cross word or make a new list of words for a new cross word.

13. Sand Dig: Therapist gathers little plastic animals and sand. Therapist fills up bucket with sand and hides plastic animals in it. Child and therapist go on an, “archeological dig” and compete to see who gets more animals. Afterwards, you can use animals in a play skit.

14. Theme Day: Therapist can choose to do a theme day once a week or for a whole week. Decide ahead of time what a good theme would be. Examples could be: Insects, Dinosaurs, Summer, Outer Space, Scientific Experiments, Plants, Musical Instruments, the Zoo, the Ocean, Magic, Disney etc..

On each day, focus on one aspect of your theme and dedicate the whole session to learning about this topic. For example, for the Outer Space theme day, all reinforcement for the week will have something to do with outer space such as plastic space aliens or spin tops as spaceships.

On Monday, child and therapist will learn about the planet Mars. Arts and crafts can be to paint a Styrofoam ball red.

On Tuesday, child and therapist can learn about the stars. Therapist can bring glow in the dark star stickers and with parent’s permission, stick them on the wall in child’s room or bathroom. Turn off the light and pretend you are flying in outer space.

15. Sample Magic: Purchase or rent a kid’s magician book and teach the child simple magic tricks that will amaze his or her parents. For a peer date, set up a magic show and have the child entertain his or her peer. Afterwards, have the child teach the peer some of the magic tricks.

16. Giant Cards: Child and therapist make giant playing cards out of 8×11 paper. When all are done, play a game of go fish. The cards alone will create a lot of laughter, let alone trying to hold a few in your hand!

17. Mexican Jumping Beans: Pretend therapist has “magic beans.” Tell the child to be absolutely quiet and to really concentrate on the beans. Present the beans and wait. When a bean jumps, act surprise and say, “How did THAT happen?” and close your hand. If the child requests to look at them again, slowly open your hand. Children will be amazed at Therapist’s jumping beans.

18. Body Drawings: Get two big sheets of paper and outline child’s body on paper. Have child do the same for therapist. Have therapist draw the child’s face and clothes and have the child do the same for you. For added fun, color the child’s nose green and face purple. Put rainbow streaks in their hair and exclaim, “Isn’t this a split image of you?”

19. Beat the Clock: Get a timer and use a page from a book or a room in the house and list as many things as possible within the time frame. This is a good method to teach rapid responding.

20. Is there something in your ear?: Look at the child with a quizzical expression and say, “Is there something in your ear?” look into his ear and magically pull out money, toys or food. Therapist and child can think of crazy things to pull out of each others ears such as shoes, books, socks, big stuffed animals…you name it, the child will pull it out of a therapist’s ear!

21. Oops!: Have therapist “accidentally” sit on a whoopee cushion as they are about to do a drill. Have therapist look surprised and say, “(child’s name)! Was thaaaaaaaat you!!!??”

22. Feet Dragging: Have the child lie down and grab their feet. Therapist then pulls them and takes them on a ride around the room.

23. Salt Pepper: Pretend to eat the child for lunch/dinner/breakfast. Gather all the ingredients and “pour” them over the child. When it comes to the pepper, either have the therapist sneeze or get the child to sneeze by prompting them, “Hey, I just poured pepper all over ya!”

For a behavior to re-occur, reinforcement must be contingent on the desired behavior. As well, if a therapist wants to decrease inappropriate behavior, reinforcing APPROPRIATE behavior and ignoring the inappropriate behavior will decrease the frequency or duration of the inappropriate behavior and increase the likelihood of appropriate behavior.

In the beginning of an ABA program, reinforcement is delivered in high frequency in order to shape appropriate behavior and motivate the child to learn. Common reinforcers in the beginning are food and drink, as these are natural reinforcers for any living creature.

Social praise is always paired with food to teach the child to enjoy verbal praise, a type of secondary reinforcement.

As the child ages in an ABA program, the style of programming changes. Programs taught formally at the table have been moved and generalized in the environment.

As well, time sitting at the table will resemble the time the child must sit at school. Reinforcement during this time is faded in frequency and in type.

Big reinforcers such as computer time are saved after long periods of program work and smaller toy, food, or verbal praise occur intermittently within programs.

Food should be faded so that the child only receives food during snack time or for behaviors that need to be heavily praised such as peeing in the toilet.

For example, if a child pretends to cut velocro fruit and offers a half to a therapist to eat, then the child is preforming a reciprocal interaction. Some children with autism may lack this and must require extra efforts from therapist’s to engage the child. Therefore, a therapist may need to really exaggerate their facial expressions as another way to show how fun reinforcement is. There will be times when a therapist will try anything to make a child smile. Therefore, it is necessary to do a reinforcement assessment to find what will make a child laugh or smile.

A reinforcement assessment is a method therapist’s use to find what is reinforcing for a child at a particular time. Therapist’s can hold out two objects or food and wait for the child to communicate which one is more desirable. A therapist can then hold up the desirable with another toy (or food) to find out which is even more reinforcing. By doing this, a therapist can find a range of reinforcers that are good, great, and to die for.

Toy reinforcers can and should be used with older children as long as it is appropriate. For example, toy helicopters, balls that light up slime and whoopee cushions are all appropriate for children over 7 years old.

For children who are chronilogically older but may be a few years behind developmentally, types of reinforcement should be taken into consideration. For example, if a child who is chronicalogically aged 8 but is deveolpmentally functioning at age 4, gross physical reinforcement should be encouraged. Examples can be jumping on a trampoline, playing tug-o-war, tickling or pillow fights. These types of reinforcements are suitable to older children and, therefore, will not cause the child to be socially isolated from his peers. At the same time, these reinforcements will be reinforcing for a child who is developmentally aged four.

Toys should also represent what the child’s Self-Stimulatory Behaviour is. If a child enjoys things that spin, then a therapist should bring spin tops, fans, and helicopters as toys a child can earn at the table.

Many toys can be purchased at a dollar or party store for reasonable prices. To avoid satiation, a therapist should think of around 3-5 different things you can do with that particular toy. For example, “goop” can be used to stretch it, wrap it around body parts, make a eye mask, bounce it, throw it at the wall or window to see what happens or roll it out on the table.

It is also important to try for communication with non-verbal children. Working on sound production, sign language, PECS, eye contact, pointing, or tapping the therapist’s hand should all be practiced during toy reinforcement and physical reinforcement.

• Always pair a social praise with food or a toy. This is a method to teach the child to enjoy social praise and to fade food and toy reinforcers as the child ages.
• It is a good idea to bring a bag of reinforcers from your home when you do a session. This avoids satiation from “normal” reinforcers that are present on a daily basis and sparks interest in the child. Reinforcers should be changed every time a Therapist does a session so that the child keeps guessing at what a Therapist has in their bag.
• Remember to use the Premack Principle throughout your session. The Premack Principle states that a child will do a less desirable activity in order to get a more desirable activity. In this sense the activity becomes the reinforcement for the child. If the more desirable activity is contingent on a less desirable activity, then the less desirably activity is more likely to occur.

Presenting and Delivering Reinforcement is KEY

• Presenting – Therapist can buy or use little party bags, fuzzy change bags, boxes, or canisters to carry reinforcers. Therapist can also wrap reinforcers individually for added fun. By presenting the reinforcers in this manner will increase the desirability of the reinforcer and make it much more motivating to work towards.
• Delivering -When delivering reinforcement, Therapist should do the following -
  - Be in eyes view of the child (i.e. the child should not be looking up to you, but should be eye-to-eye)
  - Be genuinely happy

  - Don’t be too loud or monotone (make sure your reinforcement sounds different from other forms of a consequence such as a “No”)

  - Do not forget to reinforce good sitting, hands quiet, and compliance.

  - Use age appropriate reinforcement (i.e. tickling an 11 year old is inappropriate as using a lot of language for a child who cannot yet discriminate receptive language)

It is very important to learn to read the child. If the child is not enjoying the Therapist’s reinforcement, change it or do a program. As well, if the child is full of energy, using soft, soothing types of reinforcements will help the child to calm down therefore increasing maximum learning.

Once the child can approximate some part of a correct response with the use of a prompt, the therapist then “ups the anty” by giving a lesser type of reinforcement (“good job”) and fading their prompt until the child responds correctly. For this response, reinforcement is delivered in larger quantities (when compared to the teaching phase) in order to increase the likelihood of the behavior.

This teaching strategy is called differential reinforcement. If the child responds independently without any assistance from the therapist, the quality and quantity of reinforcement is stronger than reinforcement at prompted trials.

Differential Reinforcement:
Using stronger reinforcement for independent success and using lesser reinforcement for non-success. Think of Differential Reinforcement as giving EXCELLENT feedback to an EXCELLENT response, GREAT feedback to a GREAT response, OKAY feedback to an OKAY response, and CORRECTIVE feedback to an incorrect or non-response that is poor in attention and motivation.

Choose your EXCELLENT reinforcer by finding food or items that the child loves but rarely gets. If you choose a food or item that the child normally gets, it will not be a powerful motivator for EXCELLENT responses and the child will not comply to the instruction given.

For anything less than an EXCELLENT response, the child will receive other reinforcers that will make him or her happy and content.

Remember that therapists need to avoid satiation by not always giving one type of food or item for responses. Therapist should have a variety of food and toys that the child absolutely loves and use them throughout their session. You can decide what type of food and toys to use to shape a desired behavior by doing a Reinforcement Sampling where you hold up two objects and see what the child chooses. From there you pair the chosen item with another item and see what they choose. From this sampling, you can get an idea of what the child really wants at that time.

An Example of Teaching the Label, “Apple” in an Expressive (Object) Labels Program by using differential reinforcement

If a therapist wants to teach the child the label, “apple,” the therapist or team must first decide what a correct response is. For verbal children it will be the full word, for non-verbal children, it may be picking the correct PEC, and for children who have a hard time with pronunciation, an approximation to the label can be considered a correct response.

During each teaching trial, a therapist must deliver a consequence for the child’s behavior. If the consequence is correct, reinforcement is given.

First Sitting:

Therapist: “What is it?—APPLE” (APPLE is a verbal prompt- voice is slightly above normal speaking voice)

Child: “Apple”

Therapist: “Good! That’s apple!” (reinforcement is appropriate for a full prompted response)

Therapist: “What is it?—Apple” (voice is normal speaking voice when giving verbal prompt)

Child: “Apple”

Therapist: “All right, that’s an apple!” (repeating the label is called an expressive follow-up and can be used to help learn the label)

Therapist: “What is it?—-Ahh…” (normal speaking voice when delivering a partial verbal prompt)

Child: “Apple”

Therapist: (lifts child up in the air, or gives food, toy etc..) “You did it! It’s apple!”

Therapist lets child go for a correct response with a faded prompt.

Second Sitting:

Therapist: “What is it?—Ahh” (whispers verbal prompt)

Child: “Apple”

Therapist: “Good!” (gives child tickles or some form of physical reinforcement for a correct response with a faded prompt)

Reinforcement at this level is quick as the pace of drills is essential to catch children “off guard.” If you run your drills fast, you can easily fade your prompt completely and hope that the child will automatically say the label. This method is called behavioral momentum.

Therapist: “What is it?—therapist mouths the sound “Ahh”

Child: “Apple”

Therapist: “Holy-Molly!”

Therapist: “What is it?

Child: “Apple”

Therapist: “Woo-Hoo, that’s apple!” let the child go play/ give food/ special toy.

Children learn at different paces, so this example can be stretched to several days at a certain level of prompting, such as a verbal prompt of, “Ah” over two or three days.

Here is an old video of a child learning some basic sounds using the so-called “lovaas method” of language acquisition.