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Evaluating the stability, validity, and utility of hierarchies produced by the Social Interaction Preference Assessment
Author(s) -
Morris Samuel L.,
Vollmer Timothy R.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of applied behavior analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.1
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1938-3703
pISSN - 0021-8855
DOI - 10.1002/jaba.610
Subject(s) - psychology , preference , reinforcement , autism spectrum disorder , social relation , stability (learning theory) , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , autism , social psychology , machine learning , statistics , mathematics , computer science
Morris and Vollmer (2020) evaluated a novel method of assessing preference for social interaction, which they called the Social Interaction Preference Assessment (SIPA), and found it often produced hierarchies similar to a concurrent operant reinforcer assessment. We replicated and extended these findings. In study 1, we evaluated the stability of the SIPA hierarchies by conducting multiple SIPAs with 5 participants diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In Study 2, we evaluated the validity and utility of these hierarchies by providing different social interactions as consequences for skill acquisition tasks with 3 participants from the first study. Varying degrees of stability in the SIPA hierarchies and a high level of correspondence between these hierarchies and rates of acquisition during the reinforcer assessment were observed. These findings and their implications are discussed.