Displacement of leisure reinforcers by food during preference assessments.
Food wins the beauty pageant, yet leisure items you think kids ‘don’t want’ can still work as reinforcers—test them contingently before you drop them.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team ran paired-stimulus preference assessments. Kids saw one food and one leisure item side by side.
They asked each child to pick. They did this many times to see which group won.
All kids had developmental delays. The goal was to learn if food always beats toys in these tests.
What they found
Food won most choices for twelve of fourteen kids. Leisure items looked like losers.
But the story did not end. The staff later gave the ‘losing’ toys as real reinforcers during work tasks.
Those toys still made the kids work. Rankings lied; the toys still worked when delivered for correct responses.
How this fits with other research
Carter et al. (2020) saw the same food-win pattern with typically developing kids. Only four of seven kids actually worked harder for their top food. The lesson: what wins the picture test may not win the work test.
McAdam et al. (2005) and Mueller et al. (2000) showed you can flip leisure rankings by withholding the items first. A short break made toys climb back up the list.
Together the papers say: food tops the survey, but brief deprivation or a quick reinforcer test can put leisure items back in the game.
Why it matters
Do not toss the ‘losing’ toys after a paired-stimulus assessment. Run a quick reinforcer assessment next session: give the toy for one task, food for another, and count responses. You may keep a powerful reinforcer without extra calories or cost.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Identification of reinforcers for individuals with developmental disabilities is often based on the outcome of preference assessments in which participants make selections from among a variety of items. We determined the extent to which individuals might show a general preference for food items over leisure items during such assessments and whether leisure items that are "displaced" by food items might nevertheless function as reinforcers. Arrays consisting of food items only and then nonfood items only were presented separately to 14 participants and then were ranked to determined preference. The top selections from these initial assessments were subsequently combined in a third assessment, and preferences were again established. All but 2 participants showed a general preference for food items, such that selection of nonfood items in the combined arrays was displaced downward relative to selection of nonfood in the nonfood-only arrays. Two of the participants were exposed to a condition in which a nonfood item was delivered contingent on the occurrence of an adaptive response, and increased rates of responding by both individuals were observed. Results are discussed in terms of limitations posed by using only food items as reinforcers and the resulting need to take precautionary measures when attempting to identify nonfood reinforcers.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1997 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1997.30-475