Stability of preference and reinforcing efficacy of edible, leisure, and social attention stimuli
Edible preferences stay almost frozen for a year, so test them less and spend your minutes on leisure and social stimuli that move around.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Butler and team tracked three kinds of reinforcers for a full year. They used paired-stimulus choice tests each month. They ran reinforcer checks every two months.
All eight children had developmental delays. Ages ranged from 4 to 12. The study took place at a private clinic.
What they found
Edible items won every time. They stayed top-ranked month after month. They also produced the most work in reinforcer tests.
Leisure items shifted spots. Social praise shifted even more. Both lost power faster than food.
How this fits with other research
Russell et al. (2018) showed tokens can beat edibles in the short term. Their kids worked harder for tokens after they had already eaten. Butler’s year-long view says edibles win the long game.
Regnier et al. (2022) reviewed ways to keep token economies strong after you remove tokens. Stable edible reinforcers give you a back-up when token value dips.
Al-Nasser et al. (2019) proved novices can run preference tests with picture guides. Pair that ease with Butler’s result and you can let new staff test edibles less often.
Why it matters
You can test edible preferences once a quarter and trust the rank. Re-test leisure and social items every month because they drift. This saves you time without losing reinforcer power.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Behavior analysts have developed an extensive technology of assessing preferences, but little research has evaluated the extent to which preferences change over time. In this study, monthly paired-stimulus edible, leisure, and social preference assessments and bimonthly reinforcer assessments were conducted over a 1-year period with 4 individuals with developmental disabilities. Across participants, short-term (i.e., month to month) preference was most stable for edible items (average Spearman rank-order correlation coefficient = 0.79) and less stable for leisure items (average = 0.66) and social stimuli (average = 0.50). Long-term stability of preference was evaluated by comparing the first preference assessment to the final assessment, 12 months later. Across participants, average Spearman rank-order correlation coefficients were 0.63 for edible items, 0.33 for social stimuli, and 0.19 for leisure items. For all participants, edible items were associated with the highest response rates during reinforcer assessments. Suggestions for determining the frequency of conducting preference and reinforcer assessments are discussed.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2021 · doi:10.1002/jaba.807