Rienforcers are difficult to choose that are effective. Some ideas to make them more effective are listed below. 

Therapist can more easily generalize behavior with the session by introducing different antecedents, situations and consequences within the training session. This reduces the cost, time and inconvenience of going to different location and situation in the community. The formal program may contain the basic skills and informal reinforcement can be used during the day to program for generalization outside the session.

For example, the therapist may work on saying "hello" during the session and then have the client practice saying hello by answering the telephone throughout the day or greeting people that come to the door.  The informal parts of the program that are modeled and discussed with the family can lead to a more dramatic and  improvement in the client overall behavior observed by others in the community. 

Thoughts about t
Isn't it true that the brain is an amazing organ? Some people function with only a small piece of their brain..that were in accidents or injuries.  I have had many clients with alot of seizure, lobotomies and brain damage yet they learn to do almost anything... so I think even if the research specifically has not been done the outcome of teaching people shows that the brain can develope and grow in most all areas of learning and performance.

Trainers in the field often find themselves limiting there reinforcer list to a short number of standard reinforcers. There are several things to remember to make your reinforcers extremely powerful. 

One thing is to use some sort of reinforcer survey to assure you capture as many possible reinforcers as possible. There are many surveys already available to you that others have done or you can create your own! 

Second is to remember that anything that increases the probability the behavior will occur is a reinforcer. Therefore even relatively unusual items such as a nap, a favorite chair, a unusual toy, helping you with a chore, running out side in the yard, even a rock that the child likes the color of can be used as reinforcers.  Therapist should keep their eyes and ears open for novel and unusual reinforcers especially in the case of clients that are difficult to teach things. 

 Thirdly, reinforcer sampling is a good practice. This technique of reinforcer sampling involves testing the reinforcer with the client by giving them a sample to see if they enjoy the item and even giving it contingent on a behavior to see if it increases the behavior. 

REmember Reinforcement is extremely powerful in training the child or client but only if it is truly a reinforcer in that it increases the frequency of the desired behavior! :)

Parents and others often ask about the differences between Speech therapy and Behavior Therapy with a Communication goal.  There are several possible differences one might observe in the Applied setting. Although in theory they are not usually specified in books or training programs (See guidelines speech and Behavior therapist follow for more accurate discussions).

One difference is the focus of Behavior therapy is usually first on breaking down the speech into functional components rather then structure of the words or sentences. Behaviorist usually set goals such as training of words to attain items, express a need or other functional use of the words.  Speech therapist traditionally stress the formulation of the words and the exact pronunciation as well as use of the word. Note that the above is a generalization over many years of experience and observation and may not be the case with all speech therapy. 

A second major difference is the focus of the behaviorist is on generalization, maintenance of speech and using the words in the environment on a daily basis consistently. In order to achieve this behaviorist typically set up different environments to practice the functional use of the words at home or on outings for example. The may also have the client use the words throughly the day in different situations in one environment in order to achieve consistency. Behaviorist almost always set-up contingencies and reinforcers specific to the individual in order to motivate the client to actually Speak. The outcome research and applied application usually shows a tremendous increase in verbalizations by the client  in a very short time using Behavioral Approaches.