We have covered a lot of information in this module. You have learned about the importance of using rewards and how to use rewards and prompts to help your child learn. Since these are such important concepts, and because we will use these concepts throughout the whole program, we are including a review for this module only. Please review the following carefully.
Here are some of the key points we covered:
- A reward that strengthens the behavior you want to teach is called a reinforcer.
- Reinforcers should be delivered immediately after the behavior you want to reinforce.
- Use small bits of treats (which can be food, toys, or activities) so the child doesn’t get tired of them.
- Pair treats with social reinforcers, like praise, tickles and attention, so that the praise, tickles and attention become reinforcers, too.
- A “natural reinforcer” is one that follows naturally from the behavior, such as getting help when the child asks for it, or getting a treat when he requests it.
- Reinforcers can be anything the child likes, but try to use at least a few different types of things so your child doesn’t get tired of any one of them.
- Reinforcers will be especially powerful if you can save some of them to use only for learning, instead of having them be freely available.
- It is best to use “errorless learning” when possible; this means that you give your child as much help as needed so she can be successful and you can reinforce her for doing the skill correctly.
- The help you give a child is called a “prompt.” Prompting can be physical (where you guide her physically to do the behavior), a gesture (for example, pointing to what you want her to touch), or a ‘model’ (demonstration) that she can imitate.
- Give only as much help as needed, and fade out your prompts as your child becomes more independent in doing the skill.
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Now we are going to ask you to answer some questions about what you have learned. Some of the questions will have choices, some will be true or false questions, and some will be fill-in-the-blank questions. A good way to work on these questions is to read each question, think about the answer, make your best guess and then read on to have the answer explained. There will be 10 questions. If you answer all of the questions correctly, you are probably ready to try out some of the suggestions we have made in this section. However, if some of the questions were difficult for you, or, if you answered them all correctly but feel it might be helpful through this module one more time, you might want to do so before moving ahead.
