Hi, welcome to "Ask the Expert", I am Selena Layden, the Assistant Director for Training here at VCU ACE and today I am with Emily Helmboldt, she is one of our Technical Assistance Coordinators also at ACE. Today we are talking about reinforcement, so Emily can you tell us what reinforcement is.

Emily: Sure, thanks Selena. Reinforcement technically speaking is anything that is added after the behavior that serves to increase the behavior or maintain it in the future. For example, if I were teaching in the classroom and I asked a student to come to the board to answer a question and a student volunteered and I gave them a high five and smile on the way up hopefully that would increase them wanting to volunteer in the future. So the high five and the smile served as reinforcement. 

Selena: So why is it important that we use reinforcement in our classrooms.

Emily: For me there a couple of reasons that reinforcement is important and that goes back to teaching new skills so when you reinforce a new skill it increases the likelihood that the student will repeat that skill in the future or behavior and facilitates learning.
Another reason that when the student learns that doing that behavior is reinforcing it can serve as to motivate them in the future to do that behavior again so the reinforcement then will motivate them when they are in the same situation or prompted to do that skill again.

Selena: So if we were turning to some teachers who really wanted to try this out in their classroom or try to increase the amount of reinforcement that they are using what are some tips you can give them?

Emily: Two main tips that I use or recommend to my teachers most often is first is the immediacy of reinforcement.  For example, if your student engages in the behavior perhaps they are matching two cards and they get it right, immediately you want to reinforce that by a tickle or a smile or a high five, what's reinforcing to that student. And so the immediacy we know through research is a key element in the effectiveness of reinforcement.

The other thing I talk to teachers about is don't assume what is reinforcing for one student is reinforcing for another student. So another words trying to figure out what the preference is for reinforcers, a high five might be reinforcing for one student but another student may not like high fives at all. So figuring out what the students like and utilizing that knowledge can really make a difference between something that you provide to the student at the behavior as being reinforcing or not being reinforcing.


Selena: Well Emily thank you so much for spending some time with us today and sharing this information.

If you want more information on this and other topoics please visit our website at www.vcuautismcenter.org. Thank you.