Motivation – How to Incorporate It into Teaching

Schreibman, Kaneko, and Koegel (1991) suggest ways to increase the motivation of children with ASD as follows.

1) Children have the opportunity to make choices throughout the teaching session. For example, Mr. A. when teaching expressive (i.e., verbal) identification of emotions in pictures, allowed Shantelle to choose which book to look at – a photo album of family and friends or a picture book. Additional examples of how to incorporate choice-making are available in the Choice-Making Lesson under Behavioral Interventions.

2) Alternating between mastered tasks and novel ones. Mr. A had been working with Shantelle in her kitchen at home to learn to sort utensils. She had previously mastered taking the forks and cups from the dishwasher and putting them away. He wanted to teach her to sort and put away the spoons, so he put forks, spoons, and cups in the dishwasher for her to sort.

3) The child’s attempts are reinforced as are his/her accurate responses. Mr. A and Shantelle were playing with blocks and working on receptively identifying (i.e., handing) the squares. As Mr. A. made a building, he asked Shantelle for different-shaped blocks, including squares. When she handed him a rectangle instead of a square, he still allowed her to knock the tower over (reinforcer) after showing her the square block.

4) The teacher and child take turns. For example, Mr. A and Shantelle were playing with puppets and working on placing them “in front of” and “behind” the toy barn they were playing with. First, Mr. A put the cow puppet in front of the barn, saying, “My cow is in front.” Then he asked Shantelle to put her horse puppet behind the barn.

5) Reinforcers presented are related to the task. For example, it would be more appropriate for Mr. A to take Shantelle to the playground to point to a picture to request swing, followed by a few pushes on the swing, than to sit at a table with pictures of playground equipment and rewarding her with cereal each time she pointed to the correct picture (e.g., “touch slide”).

The following is an example of a lesson in which Mr. A incorporates all of the motivation components.

Mr. A was working on teaching Shantelle expressive (i.e., verbal) labeling of the color purple to Shantelle, she had previously mastered the colors blue, yellow, and white. Mr. A had put a set of different colored train cars on the shelf as well as a set of different colored connector blocks (choice of materials). After Shantelle pulled the train set off the shelf, Mr. A interspersed mastered and novel tasks while the two of them played. Mr. A started with the track set up and all the train pieces in a box on his lap. As they sat down to play, Mr. A took out a yellow train car. Once Shantelle said, “yellow,” she received the car. He then pulled out a purple car. Shantelle said, “want it.” Mr. A prompted her by saying, “purple.” When she repeated “purple”, he handed her the purple train car (reinforcing attempts with reinforcers directly related to the task). They took turns with the box of train cars; first he held them, then she held them as he asked for different colored pieces. Mr. A continued the play activity until all the pieces were used, alternating between pulling out purple, yellow, blue, and white cars.