The Power of Choice Making

Choice making is a powerful reinforcer. It is also an effective technique to increase student engagement and participation when it is used as an antecedent intervention.

Choice making can reduce challenging behaviors and increase communication, and it can also be used as a tool to effectively set expectations and set limits. This strategy can be used with a variety of individuals.

Choice Making to Increase Reinforcement Value

When an individual is provided with a variety of options to select activities which involve highly preferred items, the activity or choice made often serves as reinforcement.

Providing an array of reinforcement options/choices can also reduce reinforcer satiation (or "burn out") and increase the effectiveness of the intervention.

For example, an individual can be provided with a reinforcement choice board before tasks/activities begin and can be asked: "What do you want to work for?" or "Choose a fun activity/item you want to access when you complete your work."

Choice Making as an Antecedent Intervention

Antecedent interventions aim to alter the environment before a challenging behavior occurs.

Consider a student that refuses to complete work. Choice making as an antecedent intervention can be used as a strategy where the student is presented with a list of the tasks/activities that need to be completed, for a specific period of the day or class, but the student is allowed to choose which items/tasks they want to complete first, next, etc.

This simple intervention has proven to increase compliance as well as the amount of work completed by students, by sharing control over the tasks/activities. For example: "These are the activities that need to be completed for language arts, but you can choose which one you want to do first."

It is important to praise for compliance or work completion at the end of each activity before the next choice of activities is presented. "Wow, you worked so hard on that one. Which one do you want to do next?".

Choice Making as a Form of Communication

Individuals who do not yet use verbal language may struggle to communicate, but this does not mean they don't have needs or wants that they want to share. Often challenging behavior arises from the student's inability to express what they want or need or from a lack of a communication system.

In these situations, presenting a student with choices allows the student to participate and engage in selecting what they need or want. The choices presented can be tangible (e.g., actual items), visual representation (e.g., pictures), or more abstract representations (e.g., icons, text) of the choices available.

Choice boards also allow the students to select from various fields and communicate about different topics by providing them with choice boards in different areas of their lives.

Initiating the conversation with a simple statement of "choose one" or a question of "which do you want?" is sufficient to engage the student in the communication exchange and encourage choice making.

Choice Making to Reduce Challenging Behavior

Challenging behavior can be maintained by different functions, and choice making can have a positive effect when such behavior has a function of "escape/avoidance or access to tangibles."

In a study by Romaniuk, et al. (2002) "The Influence of Activity Choice on Problem Behaviors Maintained by Escape versus Attention" , they found that students who displayed escape-maintained challenging behavior demonstrated reductions in these challenging behaviors when they were provided with opportunities to choose among tasks.

Other studies have also found that incorporating opportunities for choices within routines will reduce protest and increase task initiation. Choice making can be incorporated in so many ways when working with students and sharing the control of the activities (order, type, materials, etc.) can yield positive outcomes.