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.
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