About a month ago I started working with Autistic kids ages five through eight years old within the public school system. Working with Autistic kids can be very rewarding as well as very challenging field of work. “Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a range of complex neurodevelopment disorders, characterized by social impairments, communication difficulties, and restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior” (NIH). A child suffering from Autism can range from very low functioning, meaning they require more help then others, to very high functioning, meaning they need less help and can work more independently.

B.F. Skinner was a Harvard University graduate student who was the founder of operate conditioning which provided another important part to behaviorism. According to E. Bruce Goldstein’s book, Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experiences, operant conditioning “focuses on how behavior is strengthened by the presentation of positive reinforcers or withdrawal from negative reinforcers”.

When connecting operate conditioning to working with Autistic kids, I have found it to be a great tool, if used correctly. Working with Autistic kids requires a lot of repetition; therefore using positive reinforcers to maintain and increase a good behavior and or skill is very beneficial to the child and their development. For example, in the low functioning autistic class, operant conditioning is used very frequently and rewards are earned very easily. Children in this very low functioning autistic class (ages five to six years old) are so developmentally delayed that they barely speak, therefore, by using reinforcers (different types of small candy pieces) when I child would repeat after the teacher and make sounds to show that they are trying, helps to maintain and increase the child’s rate of making sounds when asked to (thus, reinforcing a child with candy for trying to pronounce words increases the child’s rate of pronouncing words). This method of operant conditioning is also used in the high functioning autistic class but the rewards are not so easily given because they are more developmentally developed and can work more independently.

Thus, operant conditioning is a great tool that is used everyday when working with autistic kids and can also benefit anyone because it focuses on stimulus-response relationships. After reading this chapter it helped me to pay even closer attention to working with autistic children and the reinforcers I use to help maintain and increase their development.

References:

Goldstein, B. (2011). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research and everyday experience (3rd ed.). Wadsworth, Inc.

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/autism/detail_autism.htm