American Research Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) often struggle with completing tasks in the classroom due to a myriad of reasons. One of the approaches to improve task completion with these students is to use positive reinforcement, a technique that uses a positive reward such as social praise or a tangible toy when students complete tasks correctly in order to increase that response in the future. My research question was: What happens to task completion with children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) when the teacher focuses on appropriate individualized positive reinforcement? I went to an autism center in a Midwest city to observe teachers interacting with students while using positive reinforcement techniques. These observations, paired with teacher and parent interviews and a literature review, have led me to conclude that for my own classroom, appropriate individualized positive reinforcement would be a very successful method to improve task completion with children with ASDs. From the research, I concluded that the most important component of successful positive reinforcement with students with ASDs was to focus on reinforcements that the child preferred and that were effective, even after continued use. There is no approach that seems to work with every child, which highlights the need for appropriate individualized reinforcement to improve task completion.