An Investigation of a Video-Based Preference Assessment of Social Interactions.
Video picks of social partners can guide you, but always run a quick real-play check before you pair staff.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Three children with autism watched short videos of social play. Each clip showed a different adult doing a fun activity with a child.
The team ran two kinds of video preference tests. One let the kids pick but never gave the toy. The other let them pick and then gave the toy.
After the videos, the kids played with the real adults. The team counted how long each child stayed and smiled. They wanted to see if the video picks matched real fun.
What they found
Two kids picked the same adult in the videos and in real play. Their video choices matched their real smiles and stay time.
One child picked one adult in the video but played longer with a different adult. For this child, the no-access video test was wrong.
The lesson: videos can work, but you must test the pick with the real thing.
How this fits with other research
Guérin et al. (2017) came first. They used videos to let kids pick therapy animals. Wolfe et al. (2018) copied the video idea but switched from animals to people.
Kronfli et al. (2024) took it further. They moved from picking people to picking conversation topics. All three studies show the same rule: ask the child, not the adult.
Al-Nasser et al. (2019) looked at the flip side. They taught adults to run preference tests with picture guides. Their high-fidelity packets could help you run Katie’s video test the right way every time.
Why it matters
If you work with kids who have autism, try a quick video test before pairing staff. Show two 10-second clips and let the child point. Then run a 5-minute play test with the chosen adult. If the child stays and smiles, you have a match. If not, trust the real play data. This two-step check takes 15 minutes and saves weeks of poor pairing.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
We examined the use of a paired-stimulus, video-based preference assessment (VPA) to identify high- and low-preference social interactions for three children with autism spectrum disorder. We conducted two VPAs with each participant: one with access to the interaction contingent on each selection and one without access. We also conducted a concurrent-operant reinforcer assessment to evaluate the accuracy of the VPAs in identifying reinforcers. For two participants, the VPAs corresponded strongly and the results of the reinforcer assessment suggest that the high-preference interaction produced more of the target response than the low-preference interaction. For the other participant, the VPAs identified different high- and low-preference interactions, and the results of the reinforcer assessment suggest that the VPA without access may have been more accurate in identifying a reinforcer.
Behavior modification, 2018 · doi:10.1177/0145445517731062