What Exactly Are You Reinforcing?

Positive reinforcement has become a very popular phrase nowadays. And why not, “When I use positive reinforcement I’m positively impacting someone’s behavior.” Isn’t that right? Well, not exactly. The ‘positive’ in positive reinforcement is more of an indicator that a certain behavior increased – not necessarily that it is good or beneficial in nature, per se. In Behaviorism, ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ hold no value judgments – much like a doctor’s test results being negative for an illness is actually a good outcome.

Many times, we are positively reinforcing actions or responses without even consciously realizing it. For instance, a co-worker we’ll call Mark once shared a situation in which no matter how hard he tried; his relationship with a fellow staff member remained lukewarm at best. On several occasions, Mark felt rebuffed and as if his co-worker was not-so-politely dismissing him. After a few days had passed, Mark finally confronted him about it. As it turns out, there was an unusually high workload placed on his colleague with a deadline looming. The coworker’s antisocial behavior was positively reinforcing the behavior of avoidance by his fellow staff. In this example, it’s important to understand that the behavior of avoidance was being positively reinforced. In effect, Mark was being punished when he approached him and the busy co-worker’s behavior was reinforced by having more time to complete the task.

Other times, our attempts at positive reinforcement (for a desired response) can actually have the opposite effect. Take for instance a parent with a goal of getting their son or daughter to lose weight. After a serious discussion with them on the importance of healthy eating and exercise, several other actions are taken; special diets, books, websites, activities. Unfortunately, this results in a 15 pound increase in the child’s weight! The truth is that the only thing we can say with certainty here is that these attempts have not positively reinforced weight loss for this individual (and in fact may have positively reinforced weigh gain instead!)

So, how do you know if your attempts at positively reinforcing a desired behavior are working? It sounds simple, but if the behavior you are seeking to increase actually does increase – then that behavior is being reinforced. This, of course swings both ways, since an undesired behavior can be positively reinforced as well. The best approach to this is to make an honest assessment of the behavior pattern of your student, co-worker or family member. If the individual’s behavior increases in frequency or intensity, then it is possible that you are inadvertently, positively reinforcing it.

How to Create a Token Board

Token Boards are a great way to motivate someone and clearly display what it is that they are working for and how close they are to getting it. While token boards are commonly used to motivate younger, typical students and some students with autism, the complexity and uniqueness of your token board is only limited by your imagination. The more individualized it is to the student, the more likely it is that the person will respond to the system.

The Basics

All token boards follow a similar pattern and can be divided into three sections:

• The reinforcer section
• The ‘tokens to earn’ section
• The ‘tokens earned’ section

            The reinforcer section represents what the student will receive after he earns all of the tokens. This can be an image of an item, a certain amount of time to access something, an activity, a choice, music or time with a friend. The tokens to earn section contains the pieces or tokens which each represent a step toward the reinforcer. The tokens earned section should be clearly divided from the ‘tokens to earn section’ to make it clear how much progress has been made or needs to be made before the reinforcer becomes available to them.

Choosing the Materials

           

            What material you choose to construct your token board out of depends on what the student you are motivating likes. For instance, one of my students really liked dinosaurs.  After finding an appropriate dinosaur image, I enlarged it, glued it to some cardboard and attached small Velcro pieces to the back of each piece. When the pieces are jumbled it was even more fun for him to earn these pieces to find out what dinosaur it was! Sometimes, the actual reinforcer (or part of it) can act as the token board itself! I usually try to build my token boards to last because you never know when you may use it again or change it slightly to use with another student. Lamination is a good way to create long-lasting boards and tokens that can grow with all of your students. Otherwise, your materials should be constructed out of rigid material such as cardboard or heavy weight paper.  

The Time-frame and Ground Rules

            How often you deliver a token depends on the behavior of the recipient. Generally, there should be a higher frequency of token delivery for appropriate behavior and task completion. Also, there is no rule which states that you have to only deliver one token at a time! Once the tokens become significant, giving multiple tokens for outstanding behavior is a great example of differential reinforcement and can be highly motivating.  Removing a token (as a response cost) for certain behaviors can also be a crucial way to make it clear that some behavior is unacceptable. If the student does not consider these tokens significant yet, though, these techniques will have little consequence.

Change it up!

          Finally, don’t forget to change your token board periodically and adjust it to your students’ current preferences. Last month’s favorite animated movie can quickly lose significance and be replaced by his, now favorite TV show. The easiest way to find this out is by simply observing what your student chooses to read, play with or talk about and steer the board to those topics. Sometimes, if you have created a ‘universal’ type board, you can easily change the tokens to reflect these changes and keep the board fresh and engaging for them.