Effects of neutral and enthusiastic praise on the rate of discrimination acquisition

Weyman and team ran an alternating-treatments design with three adults who had autism and intellectual disability.

Each adult learned matching-to-sample tasks under three praise styles: enthusiastic, neutral, or none at all.

The researchers counted how many trials each person needed to reach mastery in every condition.

Enthusiastic praise trimmed a few trials off the total needed to learn the task.

Neutral praise and no praise took slightly longer, but the gap was small.

All three adults showed the same pattern, yet each had their own favorite style.

Davis et al. (2018) asked the same question with physical activity instead of matching tasks. They also saw tiny gains and mixed personal preference, so the two studies echo each other.

Ferguson et al. (2022) compared progressive DTT to equivalence-based instruction and found bigger speed jumps than Weyman’s praise tweak. This shows that how you run the trial matters more than how you cheer.

Lindgren et al. (2024) swapped in-person for telehealth DTT and saw no change in learning speed. Together these papers suggest that medium and praise style make only small waves, while trial structure creates the big ripples.

If an adult client is stuck, pumping up your praise voice might save a handful of trials, but don’t expect a magic leap. Check first whether the teaching steps themselves are tight. When you do praise, offer both enthusiastic and neutral options and let the learner pick; their preference predicts better maintenance.