Differential Reinforcement – What Is It?

It’s better to shape up the behavior than to ship out the student.

Let’s begin with an example.

Dana is a 12-year-old student with Asperger Syndrome attending the seventh grade at East Middle School. Mr. Rollins, has developed a strategy to support Dana’s learning in his science classroom. Each time Dana walks away from her group at the lab table, Mr. Rollins will y escorts Dana back to the group. Each time Dana is working with her lab mates, she will receive a coupon that she can “cash in” after class for a technology magazine she likes.

The purpose of his is to teach Dana to discriminate when she will receive reinforcement (that is, the coupon) and when she will not. Mr. Rollins is using a strategy called differential reinforcement. That is Dana will learn to tell the difference (will discriminate) between which behaviors will get reinforcement and which behaviors will not.

Differential reinforcement means that reinforcement is provided for behaviors when these behaviors occur at certain times and places, whereas reinforcement is not provided when the behaviors do not occur during other times and places (Wolery & Fleming, in Bailey & Wolery, 1992). In our example above, Dana received differential reinforcement when she was working with her lab mates, but no reinforcement during the times when she was away from her lab mates.