Effects of systematically depriving access to computer-based stimuli on choice responding with individuals with intellectual disabilities.
Longer deprivation did not boost reinforcer value for adults with ID, so check individual choice before setting access times.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers asked three adults with intellectual disability to pick between two computer tasks. One task showed music videos. The other showed a blank screen.
Before each session the team blocked access to the videos for 0, 5, 15, or 30 minutes. They wanted to see if longer deprivation made the videos more attractive.
What they found
Two adults picked the videos less after only five minutes away. Longer blocks did not bring the videos back up. One adult barely changed at all.
The results were mixed. More wait time did not equal more interest.
How this fits with other research
Walley et al. (2005) also got mixed results when they made people wait longer for a prize. Their work shows delay can hurt preference, just like deprivation can.
Kim et al. (2025) looked at many choice studies. They warn that reinforcer history, not just time away, drives what people pick. That helps explain why longer deprivation failed here.
Fava et al. (2010) found multi-sensory rooms work only for certain sub-groups. The same rule seems true for deprivation: it does not help everyone.
Why it matters
Do not assume a five-minute break will make a reinforcer stronger. Test it. Run a quick choice probe after different deprivation times. If the client picks the item less, shorten the break or pair it with another reinforcer. Individual data beat the rule of thumb every time.
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Join Free →Run two five-minute trials: one after no deprivation, one after a ten-minute break. Record which item the client picks and use the winner.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Three adults with intellectual disabilities participated to investigate the effects of reinforcer deprivation on choice responding. The experimenter identified the most preferred audio-visual (A-V) stimulus and the least preferred visual-only stimulus for each participant. Participants did not have access to the A-V stimulus for 5 min, 5 and 24h. Following deprivation, responses produced 1-s access to either stimulus on a concurrent continuous reinforcement continuous reinforcement schedule. A combination multi-element/multiple-baseline-across-participants design showed that two participants emitted fewer responses for the preferred A-V stimulus following 5-min deprivation relative to 5- and 24-h deprivation. Higher values of deprivation did not increase the proportion of choice responses allocated to the A-V stimulus for any participant and could be attributed to preference shifts during the study.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2009 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2009.03.007