Creating DT Trainer Reinforcers

Creating your own reinforcers is a fairly straightforward process – and you can use audio, video, images, as well as any program on your computer as a reinforcer. Here are some general instructions for creating your own reinforcers:

  1. Launch the DT Trainer administration program, and select the “Common Administration” tab.
  2. Check the “Activate Development Features” box that appears on the right side of the window.
  3. Click the “Reinforcers” button.
  4. Select the “User” group from the reinforcer list, then click the “New” button.
  5. Enter your desired name for the reinforcer, and click the “Done” button.
  6. If you plan to link to a web page as the reinforcer:
    1. Check the “Web” box.
    2. Click the “.” button next to “Web URL”.
    3. Enter the address of the web site, and click the “Done” button.
      NOTE that for web reinforcers you need a good URL for the page you want and there cannot be new windows opened from that page or the DT Trainer will not be able to end the reinforcer at the end of the allowed time.
  7. If you plan to use a file (image, video) or program on your computer as the reinforcer:
    1. Click the “.” button next to “File”.
    2. Browse to the location of the file or program, and click the “Open” button.
  8. If necessary, adjust the length of time that the reinforcer runs by changing the “Run Time” field.
  9. If the reinforcer takes a few seconds to initially load, you can add a few seconds to the first time that the reinforcer is run by changing the “First Load Delay” field.
  10. Click the “Done” button to complete the creation process.

Using YouTube Videos

Here are some tips on using YouTube videos:

If you are creating reinforcers using YouTube videos you probably do not want the links that are listed on the side of the webpage. If you create the reinforcer using the “embedded” link instead of the standard link, the other links will not be displayed.

The embedding link helps with some of this. A typical YouTube video would have the following URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxCGYU4IiEk

If you change it to this format (replace watch?v= with embed/ and add ?rel=0 to the end): https://www.youtube.com/embed/FxCGYU4IiEk?rel=0

This will eliminate the extraneous videos listed on the side and the ones that are shown when the video is finished.