Including unfamiliar stimuli in preference assessments for young children with autism.

Three preschoolers with autism took part. Each child sat at a table while an adult showed two items at a time.

Half the items were already known, like a favorite car. The other half were brand-new, like a strange spinning top.

The child touched one item. The touched item stayed, the other was removed. This paired-choice test found the top picks.

All three kids chose some unfamiliar toys as highly preferred. When those new toys were later given for correct responses, every child worked harder.

In other words, the strange items acted like real reinforcers, even though the kids had never seen them before.

Duker et al. (1996) showed that top items from a choice test usually work as reinforcers. Matson et al. (2013) adds a twist: you can find those top items among unfamiliar objects too.

Fluharty et al. (2024) took the same paired-stimulus idea into middle-school group settings. Their class-wide SPA also proved that high-p items boost performance, showing the method scales up.

Huntington et al. (2022) used the paired-choice format with social interactions instead of toys. They found that who gives the assessment changes the picks, reminding us that unfamiliar stimuli can be social as well as physical.

Stop limiting preference tests to toys the child already likes. Slip in three or four new objects during your next SPA. If a novel item wins, try it as a reinforcer right away—you may discover a cheap, powerful reward that no one knew the child wanted.