What is a Reinforcer?

Remember when we kids and even adults needs some sort of a reward to do an extra mile. Reward or incentives are motivating for people to a task, work or activity. We may never realize it, but reward, incentive or pay out is being used on a daily basis. It comes in many forms, a rest after a day’s work, a pat on a back, a monetary reward after hitting a quota and many other forms. When people cringe in the idea of putting out a reward to elicit an acceptable response, it was because they did not grasp a good understanding or have hindsight what reward is all about.

In the world of individuals with disability, in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) particularly, reward has a different name it is called Reinforcer. For some, providing reinforcer is viewed as a bribery, well it is some sort of bribery, but if it produces good result then it serves its good purpose.

In ABA especially in treating autism, therapist should have a good reinforcer before starting the treatment because the therapist may not be able to produce that desirable behavior. In order to elicit a response, the therapist should present first the reinforcer before embarking on teaching a child with autism the task that he has to do correctly. Without the reinforcer, the therapist will be wasting his time in giving lessons because the child will never respond to the therapist. Not only that, the child will also miss out a lot of learning opportunities in acquiring life skills.

Reinforcers come in different forms it can be a toy, a gadget (iPad), a play or a social praise. It is dependent on what the child prefers; however, it has to be remembered reinforcer, no matter how powerful for the child should not be used often because the child should also learn other source of reinforcer. When reinforcer are served as an antecedent then behavior changes and the consequence is the reinforcer.

If you tempt the child of the item that he direly want to have, but withhold it unless he performs a task, it is guaranteed that he will perform. In the early years of treatment the child is heavily reinforced with tangible reinforcer which is the primary and evenntually, the reinforcers are being faded and replaced with another that is more realistic in different settings that is called secondary. This means that when a child in school for example is given more social praises than tangible things.

It is important to say that reinforcer should be used for educational purposes and not to reinforce a bad behavior.

Random Thoughts of a Child and Echolalia

It is sometimes uncanny situation when the child you are handling is echoing all the words that you said. It surprises all the time to hear the sentences that I have said to the child few days ago and he is saying it back to me now. It is so random and sporadic that I just have to let him speak and not interrupt when he is in “moment”. This manifest when he zones out for few seconds and then he would blabber these sentences and then he calms down.

What is Echolalia? It is a repetitive use of phrase or words. It is prevalent to children with disability most especially children with autism. It is normal language development, which begins around 18 months of age when a child has mastered imitating words or phrases and declines when the child turns to 3 years old.

Echolalia is actually a good thing for a child. It means that the child with Echolalia has the language skill and yet lacks the expressive labels of things he likes to do, want and feeling. This means the child fills the lack of expressive things on his mind with the first available label he can grasp of, which he can overly used unless intervention is given. For a child with autism, they repeat what was being said without really processing or understanding the meaning of what was said.

Echolalia is actually not a bad thing, because this means that the child’s language skills in term of pronunciation and enunciation is excellent, he just needs to be taught the expressive labels to fill the void. When this is addressed, then the child with Echolalia will have the wide of labels repertoire and Echolalia is lessened or eliminated.

Reinforcer the Powerful Tool to Teach Children

Some educators who is not familiar with Applied Behavior Analysis might think that food, toys other preferred items and social praise are given to a child after every mass trial is bribery. Well, it is some sort of bribery, which would find disgusting(probably not an appropriate adjective to describe), but if it open learning opportunities for a child, then so be it.

I remembered my supervisor saying that she would rather teach a hundred kids with ADHD than a kid with no reinforcer at hand. Being in the business of treating autism, reinforcers are very powerful tool that can open the floodgates of behavioral, academic, social and developmental skills for the child.

If you want the child to comply with you, you offer him a value dear to him in form of food, toy, tickle or social praise if he first does what being tasked of him. In the early stage of treatment, reinforcers that are tangible are heavily used. Eventually, when you a child has attained great progress to the point where he enjoys social praises, then you can start to fade it to intangible reinforcers in the form of social praises such as “Good job!”,”Well done!”,etc.

If you know the value of reinforcer in teaching a child, by all means use it to its fullest extent and you will see the changes of the child unfold right before your very eyes.

How Parents Reinforce Bad Behavior of a Child with Special Needs

Normally, when a child would escape from demand he may cry, whine, shout and throw a tantrum. If you are special education caregiver who doesn’t have good background in special needs, you would give in to those kinds of tactics from a child. However, when you are trained and have the wide knowledge on how to handle a situation like this, which is difficult, then it will be such a breeze from you.

When a child throws a tantrum, cry or shout, the best thing you can do is to ignore the child until the time he calms down. Because when one you reinforce any kind of bad behaviors by providing attention, definitely the behavior will not disappear and it will hinder the child’s learning.

In my experience as a Applied Behavior Analysis therapist, I have come to know that planned ignoring bad behaviors of a child can reap results. It was when you ignore when child will learn to calm themselves. It is important that bad behaviors are addressed for children with special needs will have more learning opportunities to be had.

Parents should also try to ignore when they see or hear their child displaying bad behaviors when under the care of a therapist to avoid reinforcing it. After all, therapist are hired to facilitate learning of skills for the child. It is important to trust the therapist for they know how to handle bad behaviors. Although it is given that there are times when a child is a not complaint, bear into mind that therapist are there to pull the child from his state and bring on learning for the child.