More Reinforcement Produces More Speech in Non-verbal Children

I was researching literature on the most effective ways of helping nonverbal children to increase spoken language when I came across a very interesting article by Robert Koegel from 1988, entitled Producing speech use in nonverbal autistic children by reinforcing attempts. The results of the article are intriguing and I believe hold broad and applicable significance for many learning situations.

One group of participants were reinforced for improved speech (making closer approximations to a word according to a set…