Social stimuli often do not function as reinforcers for the behavior of children with autism. Reinforcement by social stimuli, such as praise, is required for the maintenance and generalization of a multitude of social behaviors, most notably verbal behaviors maintained by generalized conditioned reinforcement. The purpose of this study was to extend the literature on conditioning praise as a reinforcer. We identified primary reinforcers for two nonverbal participants with autism (ages 5 and 9): tickles and potato chips. A preliminary reinforcer analysis demonstrated that button-pressing was consistently more frequent in a contingent primary reinforcer condition than in contingent praise and no programmed consequence conditions. Contingent pairing of praise and the primary reinforcer was then administered in 1-min sessions, and responding during praise alone was evaluated before and after pairing sessions each day. In the context of a reversal design with praise probes, pairing resulted in increases in button-pressing in the praise condition relative to the no programmed consequence condition. In addition, 6 consecutive pairing sessions resulted in higher levels of button-pressing with praise than 3 consecutive pairing sessions. Future research should continue refining the procedures for conditioning attention as a reinforcer as well as examine more closely the role of motivating operations in the process.