These are that I want to share to you.
1. REINFORCERS SHOULD BE REINFORCING
This seems obvious, of course. But what does it mean to be reinforcing? It means that an item or activity can be determined to be a "reinforcer" only if, over time, the behavior it follows increases over time. A reinforcer is never defined as an item or activity, but only by whether it is associated with an increase in the targeted behavior.
2. PAIR SECONDARY (POTENTIAL) REINFORCERS WITH PRIMARY REINFORCERS
This includes pairing items, activities and social praise with primary reinforcers, or previously established secondary reinforcers. Select items and activities that reflect areas of interest and that are age appropriate. These can be used incidentally to teach new skills as well as have the added benefit of not making the child stand out and potentially more accepted by his peers.
3. REINFORCERS SHOULD BE ROTATED
In order to prevent satiation of any particular reinforcing item or activity, parents and therapists should continually be working to add items to the list of potential reinforcers so that there will always be available options for reinforcement.
4. REINFORCERS SHOULD BE GIVEN CONTINGENTLY AND IMMEDIATELY UPON A CORRECT RESPONSE
If a preferred item or activity is not given contingently, it will be extremely hard to build a relationship between targeted behaviors and reinforcers. Access to reinforcement outside of the target behavior contingency reduces the power of the reinforcer.
Immediacy teaches the correlation, the contingent relationship, between the response and the consequence. The child will learn to be sensitive to the differential consequence of a reinforced trial and a non-reinforced trial (attempt). Thus, reinforcement assists in the shaping of target behavior. Over time, the form of reinforcement can change to, for example, a token system, to allow delay of a tangible item or activity.
5. REINFORCEMENT MUST BE FADED - GRADUALLY - OVER TIME
That is, both the frequency and form of the reinforcement should be faded over time to become more and more like the reinforcement schedule and form that will be found in the natural environment. That is to say, in the beginning, a reinforcement schedule is frequently on a 1:1 scale, and the feedback provided is explicit (e.g. “You touched ‘car,’ good job”). Over time, reinforcers can be given after variable rates of time (e.g. V/R 5min) and with generic praise (“Nice job”). It is important to keep in mind that fading reinforcement is a decision based on data, not on an arbitrary deadline. Remember to analyze reinforcement rates and types whenever you might encounter an increase in non-compliance, zoning or maladaptive behaviors. Your reinforcement schedule may need to be increased again in order to get behaviors under control.
6. REINFORCEMENT SCHEDULE SHOULD BE FOLLOWED CONSISTENTLY
While reinforcement schedules are dense at the beginning of therapy - while a child is learning to learn - this will not always be the case. In ABA therapy, we work to make the contrived learning environment more and more like the natural learning environment to assist the child in his ability to acquire skills more naturally. The more consistent the therapist and parent are in the application of reinforcers, the more consistent the child will be in emitting targeted responses.
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