6 Types of Reinforcers to Use in Your Teaching Strategy

When teaching children with intellectual disabilities, one of the most critical decisions an educator makes is choosing what to use as a reward. Not all rewards work equally well for every child, and not all rewards work in the same way. This is where understanding the different types of reinforcers becomes essential. A reinforcer, in behavioral terms, is any stimulus that – when delivered after a behavior – increases the likelihood of that behavior being repeated. The right reinforcer, matched to the right child, at the right moment, can transform a reluctant learner into an engaged one. Here is a clear breakdown of the six main types of reinforcers every teacher should know.

Primary reinforcers: satisfying basic biological needs 🔗

Primary reinforcers are the most fundamental category. They satisfy innate biological drives – food, water, warmth, physical comfort, and sleep. What makes them uniquely powerful is that they require no prior learning to be effective. A child does not need to be taught that food is rewarding; the body already knows. This makes primary reinforcers especially valuable when working with very young children or those with significant cognitive disabilities who have not yet developed the associations needed to respond to more complex rewards.

According to the Indiana Resource Center for Autism at Indiana University, primary reinforcers include edibles and sensory experiences such as light-up toys, fans, or massagers – all of which tap into biological or sensory needs without requiring the child to learn their value first. Because of this, they are often the starting point when building a more complex reward system for a child who does not yet respond to praise or tokens.

One important principle governing primary reinforcers is deprivation. A child who has just eaten will not find food motivating. The same snack offered when the child is hungry becomes a powerful driver of behavior. Teachers should keep this in mind: the motivational value of any primary reinforcer is directly tied to the child’s current state of need.

Secondary reinforcers: the power of learned value 🔗

Secondary reinforcers – also called conditioned reinforcers – have no inherent biological value. They become motivating only through repeated association with primary reinforcers. Money is a classic example: a coin or banknote has no nutritional value or warmth on its own, but because it can be exchanged for things that do satisfy primary needs, it becomes highly motivating.

In the classroom context, secondary reinforcers include praise, tokens, stickers, grades, and privileges. Research in behavioral therapy confirms that secondary reinforcers – once properly established – can become just as powerful as primary ones, with the added advantage that they are far more practical to deliver in a school setting and are more naturally integrated into everyday educational life.

The key to making secondary reinforcers work is pairing. A teacher who consistently gives a child a small edible treat alongside verbal praise gradually transfers the reward value to the praise itself. Over time, the praise alone can sustain the behavior, even without the edible backup. This pairing process is foundational to all the more advanced reinforcer types discussed below.

Edible reinforcers: using food and drink effectively 🔗

Edible reinforcers are a subcategory of primary reinforcers and deserve their own discussion because of the specific considerations that govern their use. As experienced special education practitioners note, edibles are never the first choice – but for children with severe disabilities, particularly those with limited functional and social skills, they may be the only way to initiate engagement and begin building behavioral momentum.

For edible reinforcers to be effective, three conditions must be met:

• The food item must be highly preferred by the child – not just acceptable, but genuinely desired.
• It must be nutritionally safe and given in small portions, so it does not interfere with the child’s diet or health.
• The child should be in a state of mild food deprivation – meaning it should not immediately follow a full meal.

Edible reinforcers work best as a bridge. The goal is to use them initially to establish a learning relationship and then gradually shift toward less intrusive, more socially natural reinforcers as the child develops. Relying on edibles long-term can create practical challenges – they are not always available, they can be distracting in group settings, and they do not generalize easily to real-world environments outside the classroom.

Tangible reinforcers: toys, objects, and desirable items 🔗

Tangible reinforcers are physical objects that a child finds desirable – toys, stickers, small figurines, craft supplies, books, or other items the child values. They are a form of secondary reinforcer because their appeal is learned and individual: one child may be motivated by a small toy car while another is uninterested in it entirely.

Tangible reinforcers are particularly effective when the child has been involved in selecting them through a preference assessment – a structured process where a teacher, often in consultation with parents and other staff, identifies what items the child finds most motivating. Preference assessments can involve direct observation, interviews with family members, or simple choice tasks where the child picks between two items. The data collected helps the teacher narrow the list to three to five highly preferred reinforcers to use during instruction.

One important consideration: tangible reinforcers can lose their appeal quickly through satiation – the process by which a reinforcer loses its value when it has been used too often. To prevent this, teachers should rotate items, keep them out of the child’s reach except during reinforcement periods, and periodically reassess the child’s preferences as interests naturally change over time.

Activity reinforcers: the motivating power of preferred experiences 🔗

Activity reinforcers are preferred pastimes or experiences that a child earns access to after completing a task or demonstrating a desired behavior. These might include extra computer time, listening to music, playing a favorite game, drawing, coloring, leading a classroom activity, or spending time in a sensory corner.

Activity reinforcers hold a strategic advantage over many other types: they often align naturally with educational goals. A child who earns extra reading time is being reinforced in a way that simultaneously supports literacy. A child who earns access to educational software games is getting both the reward and additional academic engagement. This dual function makes activity reinforcers especially efficient for the classroom teacher.

The Premack Principle – sometimes called “first-then” or “grandma’s rule” – underlies activity reinforcement. It simply states that a less preferred behavior (completing a worksheet) can be reinforced by access to a more preferred behavior (playing a game). This principle is easy to implement through visual schedules: a card showing “First: math task → Then: free choice activity” gives the child a clear, concrete understanding of what comes next, which itself reduces anxiety and increases task completion.

Token reinforcers: building delayed gratification 🔗

Token reinforcers – stars, points, stamps, stickers on a chart, or physical tokens – are perhaps one of the most widely studied and applied reinforcement strategies in special education. They function as conditioned generalized reinforcers: items that can be accumulated and exchanged for a variety of backup rewards, much like money in everyday life.

According to a landmark review published in the Iranian Journal of Psychiatry, token economy and social reinforcements both significantly increased the academic achievement of students with intellectual disabilities, with token economy showing a particularly strong effect. Similarly, a comprehensive review published in Research in Developmental Disabilities confirmed that token economies continue to hold considerable therapeutic and educational promise specifically for children with intellectual disability and autism.

Token systems work on several levels. They provide immediate reinforcement (the child receives a token right away), while also teaching delayed gratification (the child waits until enough tokens are collected before exchanging them). This dual function is particularly valuable because the ability to tolerate delays is itself an important adaptive skill. As May Institute, a leader in applied behavior analysis, explains, token economies have three core components: the target behavior, the tokens earned, and the backup reinforcers the tokens can purchase.

One important caveat noted in the research is that the child must have some capacity to understand that tokens represent future value – they need at least a basic grasp that accumulating several tokens leads to a larger reward. For children at very early developmental stages, simpler, more immediate reinforcement strategies may need to come first.

Social reinforcers: praise, recognition, and connection 🔗

Social reinforcers include verbal praise, smiles, nods of approval, thumbs-up, high-fives, pats on the back, and any form of positive attention from a teacher or peer. They are the most natural and sustainable of all reinforcer types – always available, completely free, and deeply embedded in everyday human interaction.

Research published in Intervention in School and Clinic confirms that behavior-specific praise – praise that names exactly what the child did well (“You sat quietly and finished all five questions!”) – is a foundational tool for increasing the future probability of desired behaviors. It is more effective than general praise (“Good job!”) because it helps the child understand precisely which behavior is being reinforced.

However, social reinforcers are not universally effective. As research on behavior management in intellectual disability populations clearly shows, social reinforcers such as attention, approval, and praise can be powerful for some children but entirely ineffective – or even aversive – for others. Individualization is essential: a teacher must know whether a particular child genuinely finds social attention rewarding before relying on it as a primary motivator. For students with more significant disabilities who do not initially respond to praise, praise can be built up by pairing it consistently with another known effective reinforcer until the social stimulus gains its own reinforcing value.

Privilege reinforcers: leadership, responsibility, and status 🔗

Privileges represent a distinct and often underused category of reinforcers, particularly effective with older children or those who have developed a stronger sense of social identity. Privilege reinforcers include being made class monitor, handing out materials to peers, leading the morning circle, being the teacher’s helper, or having first choice of a classroom activity.

What makes privileges motivating is that they confer status and responsibility – things that become increasingly meaningful as a child’s social awareness develops. For a child who does not respond strongly to stickers or edibles but does care about their role within the classroom community, a privilege can be far more motivating. Privileges also provide a natural bridge toward intrinsic motivation: the child begins to associate positive behavior with a sense of importance and contribution, which is ultimately more sustainable than external reward alone.

As with all reinforcers, the key is individualization. A privilege that one child finds deeply rewarding may mean nothing to another. Ongoing observation and preference assessment – not assumption – should guide which privileges are offered and to whom.

Choosing and combining reinforcers effectively 🔗

In practice, effective teaching rarely relies on just one type of reinforcer. The most robust reinforcement systems combine multiple types – for example, pairing immediate social praise with a token, which can later be exchanged for an activity or tangible reward. This layered approach addresses different motivational channels simultaneously and reduces the risk of any single reinforcer losing its effectiveness through overuse.

A few principles should guide every reinforcer selection decision:

• Identify before assuming. What a teacher thinks a child will like and what actually functions as a reinforcer for that child may be very different. Research on students with profound disabilities has consistently shown that caregiver opinion about preferred stimuli does not reliably predict what will function as a reinforcer – systematic preference assessment is far more accurate.
• Deliver reinforcement immediately. The connection between behavior and reward must be clear and timely. Delayed reinforcement weakens the behavioral link.
• Reassess regularly. Children’s interests change. A reinforcer that works well in September may lose its power by January. Periodic re-evaluation keeps the system fresh and effective.
• Plan for fading. The long-term goal is always to move toward more natural, intrinsic forms of motivation. Reinforcement systems should be designed with a fading plan in mind – gradually reducing the intensity or frequency of external rewards as the child internalizes the desired behavior.

Understanding these six types of reinforcers – primary, secondary, edible, tangible, activity, token, social, and privilege – gives educators a comprehensive toolkit. The most effective teachers are not those who reward the most, but those who reward the right things, in the right ways, for the right child.

What do you think? Considering the children you work with, which type of reinforcer do you find most consistently effective – and have you ever been surprised by a reinforcer that worked when you expected it wouldn’t? How do you currently decide when to move a child from one type of reinforcer toward a more natural or social reward?

References

1. https://iidc.indiana.edu/irca/articles/reinforcement-in-the-classroom.html
2. https://autismcenterforkids.com/classifying-reinforcers/
3. https://chalkboardsuperhero.com/2021/09/how-to-use-reinforcers-in-a-special-needs-classroom/
4. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3395934/
5. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18486442/
6. https://www.mayinstitute.org/news/acl/asd-and-dd-child-focused/use-token-economies-to-provide-positive-reinforcement-and-modify-behavior/
7. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1045988X.2023.2181303
8. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2967274/