An evaluation of preference stability within <scp>MSWO</scp> preference assessments for children with autism
Choices moved in 40 % of MSWO rounds, so always repeat the assessment once and confirm the top pick before you teach.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Melanson et al. (2023) watched the same MSWO session round by round.
They asked: do kids with autism pick the same top items every round, or do choices drift?
No new toys were added; the array stayed the same across rounds.
What they found
Preferences stayed put only 60 % of the time.
Four out of ten rounds gave a new top item even though nothing else changed.
That drift can quietly shuffle your reinforcer deck mid-assessment.
How this fits with other research
Laugeson et al. (2014) saw steadier ranks when kids got longer play time with each item.
Their fix for drift was procedural: let them play longer, not just point.
Moore et al. (2017) found a smaller twist: keep toy size the same across rounds.
When size jumped around, lower-ranked items swapped places even if the top three held.
Miranda et al. (2023) checked a different noise source: kids reaching always left or always center.
They showed minimal positional bias, so drifting picks in Melanson are likely true preference shifts, not just spot habits.
Why it matters
If you run one MSWO and move straight to teaching, you may build the lesson on a shaky top item.
Quick fix: run two or three short rounds, compare top picks, and re-check the winner before the first trial.
Taking an extra minute to repeat the MSWO beats losing momentum later when the "favorite" stops working.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Previous research has commonly evaluated preference stability over time and across multiple preference assessment administrations. No studies have evaluated shifts in preference across consecutive rounds of a single preference assessment, where rounds refer to each time the experimenter resets the stimulus-presentation array. The purpose of the present study was to examine the stability of stimulus selections across successive rounds of a multiple-stimulus-without-replacement (MSWO) preference assessment with different classes of stimuli for children with autism. The study involved a secondary data analysis and calculation of preference stability across consecutive rounds using Spearman rank-order correlation coefficients (Spearman's ρ ) for 17 participants across 40 MSWO preference assessments. Patterns of preference stability were observed in 24 out of the 40 assessments (60%) indicating that children's preferences in this study were slightly more likely to be classified as stable than other observed patterns of responding.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2023 · doi:10.1002/jaba.988