Mini Training Series: Ep 21 What Is Reinforcement and Why Is It Important?

Hi, this is Sasha from The Autism Helper, and in this episode of the mini video training series, we're going to talk about what is reinforcement and how can I use it. So I think this is a term that's commonly misunderstood. So reinforcement is something that happens after a behavior that increases the probability of that behavior in the future. So when you give a reinforcer in the moment, you're not changing that behavior in that moment. That behavior already happened. When Johnny walks in and says, "Hi, Miss Sarah, how are you?" And you are so proud that he greeted you all on his own and you like give tons of praise and you give him tokens. Yes, you are reinforcing that greeting in that moment. You're reinforcing that behavior in hopes of seeing more of that behavior in the future. You want to see him doing those greetings tomorrow and next month and next year. So it's all about making life better in the future. The behavior happened in that moment, it's done, but how we respond and how we provide reinforcers or things that maybe are not reinforcers will change how often those behaviors happen in the future. So like when my toddler was learning how to talk, when my 1-year-old started saying "wah wah" and every time she said "wah wah" we gave her her water. So she'd say, "Wah wah," we'd hand her her water bottle, reinforcing that behavior of saying, "Wah wah." It made her want to say, "Wah wah" more. So next time she was thirsty, she knew that if she said, "Wah wah," it would be followed up by us handing her the water. So it continued to happen more and more often. It's really how we learn to talk. It's really how we learn to do all of our behaviors. Think about the last time you told a joke that you thought was really funny, right? You like thought of some funny way of saying something, or you heard a joke and you repeated it. If you told a joke to a group and everyone laughed, you are much more likely to repeat that joke in the future to other, other groups. Maybe you go and you say that joke at work and you say it to your family and you say it to your husband and you say it to your girlfriends. You're repeating that joke all the time because you've gotten a good response to it. But if the first time you said that joke or funny story it bombed and no one laughed, are you likely to repeat that joke again? Probably not, right? You probably felt like a little embarrassed or like, "Oh, I thought that was funny. I guess it wasn't." So you're not going to be repeating that story or that joke again. So our behavior is shaped by reinforcement or a lack of reinforcement. So there's a couple of ways that we want to ensure that you're— we're using reinforcement correctly. One is we want to think about reinforcement as something that's flexible and that changes. Reinforcers are not static. Coffee is not always a reinforcer for my behavior. It is sometimes, but not always. Reinforcers change throughout a child's life and really throughout a child's day. Reinforcers can change hour to hour. Right before lunch, we might be very motivated to complete a task for some type of food item because we're hungry, but in the afternoon when I'm not so hungry, eh, I'm not really willing to do that. So really think about and view reinforcers through this lens of something that's changing. And reinforcers are also individual to each person. What's a reinforcer to you is not a reinforcer to me. Reinforcers are going to be different for every single person, and it's not up to us to decide what is a reinforcer for every child. We can't. Praise is not a reinforcer for every child. Grades are not a reinforcer. Teacher approval or peer approval Those are not things that are reinforcers for every child's behaviors. Some kids do really gravitate towards those things, but some kids don't. And we can't decide that, "Hey, praise and grades need to be reinforcers for all of you guys, so too bad!" Because by definition, something is only a reinforcer if it causes a behavior to increase in the future. So if you keep providing praise, keep providing praise, and you're not seeing those behaviors change and increase, then praise is not something that is reinforcing to that student's behavior. So you want to really make sure that you and your team, or you as a parent and your parenting team, all realize that. Because here we kind of get stuck in that problem of "shoulds." He should just work for good grades. He should just want to do the chores by himself without me, you know, having to tell him good job. He shouldn't need tokens. He shouldn't need an M&M after this. And it kind of leaves us at a dead end when we play the should game. We're like, "Well, he should." Cool, I agree with you. He should just want to work for good grades. But guess what? He doesn't. So our job isn't over. As a teacher, you don't walk into your principal's office and be like, "You know what? Johnny's supposed to read at the 3rd grade level and he's not, so I'm not teaching him reading." No, your principal would laugh in your face and tell you to go back and differentiate like the rockstar teacher you are. So we have to differentiate when it comes to reinforcers too. So if contrived or unnatural reinforcers— things that we are adding to the environment like food, like toys, like break time, like activities— if those are the only things that are reinforcing for your students' behavior right now, that's okay. Start with what works and start with where they are. That's not where you're gonna stay forever. You're gonna move towards more more naturally occurring reinforcers, things like work completion, good job, you know, and praise, like telling good job. But you're not there yet, and that's okay. So start with what works and start building up those positive behaviors. So how do we use reinforcers? First, you want to ensure that the things that you're using as reinforcers are actually reinforcing for that student's behavior. So some things you can do are preference assessments, trial and error and really write it down. You can interview caregivers and parents, or parents, you can talk to the teachers and ask what works at school, and really observe the child. I think observation is something we as educators really don't do enough. We rarely just spend time observing and watching our kids. And parents, you have way too much to do to just take that luxury of observing your child. But make time for that. Spend a few minutes and watch what toys your child plays with, what things they gravitate towards right away, because it will give you some good ideas of what things might function as a reinforcer. So once you have an idea of some of those things, then you want to take all of those positive behaviors that you want to see more of and ensure that they're consistently followed by a reinforcer. Yes, that might be a little bit extra work for you up front, but you want to start building up those behaviors. You want to take the good that's there and create more of it. With a lot of behavior plans, I see people automatically go to how we're decreasing the negative behavior, but really you want to start with seeing more of the good stuff. We want to start with this reinforcement, adding that in and increasing the frequency and probability of all of these great behaviors, because soon all the positive behaviors will just replace the negative ones. So it's important to really start there and start with the positive. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the mini video training series. If you want to see more, go to my YouTube channel, The Autism Helper, or our website, theautismhelper.com.