Diversifying Reinforcers and Why it Matters

I was pondering “reinforcer dependency” and came across something interesting.

The neuroscientist of recent fame, Andrew Huberman, offered the following:

“Addiction is a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure. A good life is the progressive expansion of the things that bring you pleasure.”

This struck me. Some of the most pleasant people I know have a vast set of preferred activities. You probably know them, too. They say things like “In my spare time you can find me: cooking, hiking, golfing, hanging out with my family, brewing my own beer, juggling knives, and DIY projects.” These people are genuinely interested in these things—sometimes unusual things—with a YouTube channel to prove it.

Or, they are the kind of people that see beauty in just about everything, no matter what. My grandmother can look out the window during a snowstorm and say brightly, “Isn’t it interesting how every snowflake is different? I think that’s so neat.” Or, “I love how cozy the indoors feel in the winter.”

She’s the embodiment of Huberman’s excerpt. Happy and sharp, she has a vast expanse of things that she finds enjoyable. Everything for Grandma is a reinforcer…even her 91st Hoosier winter.

Happy people know how to find reinforcement and lots of it—they are constantly expanding their reinforcers. Not in a sense that they have access to massive cash reserves or resources, instead, they have the ability to find something reinforcing in nearly every circumstance. It’s why gratitude is considered the healthiest human emotion and why we’re encouraged to keep a gratitude journal. We have to teach ourselves to pivot towards the potential reinforcers that we already have in our life (relationships, places, activities, watching basketball, etc.).

In instances where life doesn’t work out the way we want it to, it is not our ability to do without that particular reinforcer that helps us cope. Instead, it’s our ability to pivot, scan our environment, and engage with other quality reinforcers available to us (“I think I’ll just go for a drive…”). This ability to engage in our hobbies, quality relationships, or to find the reinforcing features in mundane situations does something very important: It prevents us from melting down and having a massive, adult-sized tantrum.

When a learner tantrums, we sometimes assume that it’s communication related. “Use your words!” or “Tell me what you want!” we might say. Reflexively we might throw in a program for functional communication. But what happens when they request something that isn’t available? What happens when teaching functional communication isn’t enough?

It may be easy to think that the tantrums occur due to a general “intolerance” to everyday aversive events. We might consider writing a goal regarding “tolerance”:

“Tolerates the removal/disruption/delay/denial of a preferred item or activity for 60 seconds without engaging in problem behavior.”

Sounds familiar, right?

BUT…if Huberman’s statement on reinforcer expansion applies to us, it probably applies to our learners. THIS is the key take away for today, folks.

When something awesome is taken away from a kiddo, it’s not their ability to tolerate the removal that matters. Instead, it’s their ability to pivot, scan their environment, and engage with the other quality reinforcers that are available to them (“I guess I’ll go play with Playdoh…”). If they can’t pivot and improvise, they’ll be very upset.

So, that tantrum that we’re talking about? It actually might be a cry of “Now, what am I supposed to do?”

So what can we do about it?

• Preference Assessments. Conduct frequent preference assessments to get an accurate read on things the learner enjoys. Having your RBTs categorize these items and activities as most preferred, somewhat preferred/neutral, and novel.

• Reinforce Curiosity and Exploration. Reinforce their willingness to be flexible and see what is available to them. When learners begin to scan their environment or engage with items or activities that usually aren’t preferred, reward them with access to highly preferred items and praise.

• Take data! Keep a cumulative count on how many toys and activities your learner spontaneously plays with for a certain amount of time (say, 30 seconds). As those numbers increase, you might see the inverse with problem behavior.

• Start with teaching reinforcer expansion before other programming. And spend a lot of time on it. You can place a task demand here and there, but always allow them to opt out of the task at the first sign of aversion. In most cases, they’ll want to continue with the toy or activity they were engaged with.

• Change your perspective. Tolerating skills hang learners out to dry. Start teaching replacement skills, play skills, etc.

• Practical Functional Assessment. Check out Greg Hanley’s PFA here.

• Follow up. For even more ideas/thought on reinforcer expansion, feel free to hit the comments (below) or email me. I can send more resources your way.

At the end of the day, our purpose is to improve the quality of life of our learner’s and their families! Giving a learner a robust play repertoire is a terrific way to do that. The more ways we teach them to have fun, the happier they’ll be.