Identify Strong Reinforcers

A critical component of mand training involves selecting the items and/or events that will be used as targets. It is important to choose reinforcers carefully. But first we have to make sure that there are a variety of items and events that can serve as reinforcers.

Basic methods for determining reinforcers to be used in mand training

• Preference inventory
• Observations
• Structured preference assessment

If preference assessments do not yield a sufficient bank of possible reinforcers, we will then need to condition additional events and items as reinforcers. Conditioning reinforcers will be discussed later.