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EXAMINATION OF RELATIVE REINFORCEMENT EFFECTS OF STIMULI IDENTIFIED THROUGH PRETREATMENT AND DAILY BRIEF PREFERENCE ASSESSMENTS
Author(s) -
DeLeon Iser G.,
Fisher Wayne W.,
RodriguezCatter Vanessa,
Maglieri Kristen,
Herman Kelly,
Marhefka JeanMarie
Publication year - 2001
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 - 10.1901/jaba.2001.34-463
Subject(s) - psychology , reinforcement , preference , developmental psychology , task (project management) , stimulus (psychology) , clinical psychology , social psychology , cognitive psychology , statistics , management , economics , mathematics
Several brief preference assessments have recently been developed to identify reinforcers for individuals with developmental disabilities. One purported advantage of brief assessments is that they can be administered frequently, thus accommodating shifts in preference and presumably enhancing reinforcement effects. In this study, we initially conducted lengthy paired‐choice preference assessments and identified a hierarchy of preferred items for 5 individuals with developmental disabilities. Subsequently, brief multiple‐stimulus‐without‐replacement assessments using the same items were completed each day prior to work sessions. On days when results of the daily brief assessment differed from the one‐time lengthy assessment, the relative reinforcing effects of the top items from each assessment were compared in a concurrent‐schedule arrangement. The results revealed that when the two assessments differed, participants generally allocated more responses to the task associated with the daily top‐ranked item.