13 Thinning Schedules of Reinforcement
Definition: Gradually increasing the response effort required for reinforcement
Rationale: Thinning reinforcement is used to increase student independence and generalization of a skill or task. Sometimes students can become dependent on external reinforcement from an adult or peer (e.g., verbal praise like good job). To build independence and skill growth it is important to shift from external reinforcement to more internally driven (e.g., self-satisfaction) or delayed reinforcement as students demonstrate mastery.
Ways to Support Students:
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- Identify skills or steps in which the student is exhibiting mastery. These can be good candidates for thinning reinforcement.
- Early in skill learning students often receive continuous reinforcement (i.e., immediate reinforcement after a correct response). Once student improves, the reinforcement often shifts to intermittent reinforcement (i.e., less constant reinforcement due to increased expectations).
- It’s important that reinforcers used have importance or relevance to the student. This can be accessed through observation and/ or a preference assessment (e.g., high fives may not be reinforcing for a student that does not like physical contact, thumbs up gesture or stickers may be highly reinforcing for some students).
- Determine the scope of increase for the student response (i.e., increased response speed, increased number of accurate steps in sequence).
- Determine the increase amount required (e.g., from 10 second to 5 second response or 1 accurate step completed to 2 steps).
- It can often be helpful to let the student know that you are increasing the expectations because they are doing so well.
Case Study
Student: Grade 2 student
Content: Raising hand before speaking in class
Problem: The student has had trouble remembering to raise their hand before speaking in group class sessions
Solution: The teacher put a visual cue reminder to raise hand before speaking. Initially the teacher reinforced each time that the student raised her hand before speaking by placing a sticker on their chart. After the student exhibited success, the teacher gave a sticker every time 3rd time that the student raised her hand before speaking.
Professional Resources:
- Overview of reinforcement in the classroom with a description of thinning schedules from the Indiana Resource Center for Autism: https://www.iidc.indiana.edu/irca/articles/reinforcement-in-the-classroom.html
- A research-based teacher’s guide to multiple scheulde of reinforcement: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1053451220910745
- Reinforcement strategy guide from NCII: https://intensiveintervention.org/sites/default/files/Reinforcement_Strategies_508.pdf
