Comparison of verbal preference assessments in the presence and absence of the actual stimuli.
Stop asking kids what they like—give them a quick sample right there and watch what really works.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team compared two ways to ask kids what they like.
One way was talking only: "Do you want cookies or blocks?"
The other way was talk plus touch: the child could grab the item right after picking.
Three children with developmental delay joined. Each child went through both formats while the staff recorded choices.
What they found
Talk-plus-touch picked the stronger reinforcer more often than talk-only.
But the two lists rarely matched. Rankings jumped around for every child.
In short, adding real items helped, yet results were still messy.
How this fits with other research
Wolfe et al. (2018) later asked the same question with videos of social games. They also saw mixed fits: two kids’ video picks matched real play, one kid did not.
Laugeson et al. (2014) moved from toys to photos of attention. They kept the "with access, without access" test and found photos plus a control card worked.
Kronfli et al. (2024) pushed the idea further, testing chat topics instead of toys. Only the format that let kids sample the talk predicted long conversations.
Across years the pattern holds: letting clients briefly experience the item or activity gives cleaner answers than just asking or showing pictures.
Why it matters
If you run verbal-only preference checks, you may pick weak reinforcers and see slow progress.
Bring the real cookie, toy, or music clip to the assessment. Let the child take a bite, push a button, or hear ten seconds of song.
This tiny step takes two extra minutes and can save hours of ineffective therapy later.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Stimulus preference assessments for individuals with developmental disabilities typically involve offering choices among stimuli and providing immediate access to the chosen stimuli. Several researchers have explored the utility of presenting choices verbally, thereby obviating the need to present the choices in tangible form and deliver access to those choices immediately. However, studies that have compared verbal selection to selection among tangible stimuli have nonetheless delivered the chosen stimulus following selections, in essence, manipulating the antecedent but not the consequence. It therefore remains unclear whether preference assessments that do and do not include the actual stimuli yield comparable results. The current study compared preference assessment results for three participants in which either (a) the stimuli were presented, selections were made verbally, and selection resulted in no differential consequence, or (b) the stimuli were presented both verbally and in tangible form, and selection produced access to the stimulus. Reinforcer assessments were then conducted to test contradictory predictions of reinforcer efficacy made by the two methods. Comparisons between the two assessments yielded only modest rank-order correlations (M=0.24; range, -0.17 to 0.57) that varied widely across participants. Results of the reinforcer assessments suggested that the verbal-plus-tangible stimulus preference assessment more accurately predicted reinforcer strength.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2006 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2005.08.001