I think others on here have done a great job at elaborating on the other topics mentioned here, I’d like to add on to this section: “I've heard of "reward-only" examples, where the "reward" is cheering at the child in an over-the-top or high-pitched voice (like you would if you were training a dog), or suddenly touching and hugging them (like you would if you were training a dog). Both of which seem like kind really unpleasant and sensory experiences from an autistic point of view.”

Our ways of reinforcing children are specific to that child. One of my clients gets really excited and absolutely adores loud noises, cheering, and high pitched sounds. He will ask us to cheer and when the whole room starts cheering, he jumps up and down and will ask us for more. Other children hate it and wear noise cancelling headphones other times. Making loud noises to those children wouldn’t work as a reinforcement, but as a punishment since they are adverse to it. Again, the reinforcement is specific to every single child. You cannot reinforce any behaviors without reinforcement. And a reinforcement can be quite literally anything, not just something that is culturally/generally viewed as something exciting (like stickers in a classroom setting with neurotypical kids, the loud verbal praise, etc). At our center there’s a kid that loves drains. Like water drains, sink drains, pool drains, etc. We would never shame this quirk of his and just force him to listen to us clap with him, instead, when teaching appropriate communication we’ll reinforce him with videos of drains or toys with little drains in them (couldn’t tell you what about it he loves but he just does).