We assessed whether novel praise statements could be used to (a) maintain and increase responses with existing reinforcement histories and (b) teach a previously untaught response among children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder across two experiments. During response-stimulus pairing, two responses resulted in preferred edibles but only one…

Effective training programs for individuals with disabilities often involve the use of positive reinforcement. Social interactions have many benefits over other forms of reinforcement, but more research is needed to determine how to identify social interactions that serve as reinforcers. In the first experiment, we evaluated the use of two…