What are the effects of positive reinforcement for children with ASD? It helps to understand that the effects of positive reinforcement are often one of the strongest teaching and learning tools available for those with Autism Spectrum Disorders. This is because people with any of the ASD issues will tend to have an inability to copy or imitate others.

This, as you might know, is the foundation for learning how to speak and communicate and also for learning how to socialize properly too. Just think about a very young baby and how they learn to make sounds by watching and imitating the adults making those sounds to them, or even just in their hearing. The effects of positive reinforcement for a child such as this will come from the approving smiles and beneficial results of their ability to mimic and interpret the information.

Now, consider that a baby with ASD is going to be completely unable to use those sounds and visual cues in any way at all because their minds are not functioning in the same manner. They will not be able to take in the information around them to the same extent as the child in the first example, and would need alternative approaches to encouraging their abilities to speak and respond accordingly.

This is the reason that teachers, parents and educators in general will all seek some sort of Autism training in addition to their standard teacher’s or parenting training. Because roughly one in every one thousand children is born with a form of ASD, there are a large number of programs available, but the most widely recommended and effective are those that rely on something known as ABA.

This is the acronym for Applied Behavior Analysis, which is a science that is totally unrelated to ASD. Instead, it is basically a system by which a scientific study of some essential human behavior is made and analyzed. This information is then used to formulate a reasonable approach to changing that behavior to a more socially acceptable or productive one. Most ABA strategies for children with any ASD symptoms tend to emphasize the effects of positive reinforcement as a means of overcoming an inability to mimic or imitate.

For example, when a child is repeatedly told that their use of sounds and words is good, they can make the mental connection between the positive reaction and their personal activity. This is a great approach to the learning process and is the reason that ABA is preferred by those helping children with ASD.