Using pictures to assess reinforcers in individuals with developmental disabilities.

The team compared two ways to find reinforcers for four adults with developmental disabilities. One way showed real items on a table. The other way showed simple line drawings of the same items on cards.

They used an alternating-treatments design. Each person touched or pointed to their top choices in both formats. Then the staff tested if those chosen items really worked as reinforcers in short work tasks.

For three of the four adults, the picture stack and the real-item stack gave almost the same ranking of favorites. The highly ranked items from both formats kept the adults working during the reinforcer test.

One person picked different favorites in the two formats. His picture choices still worked as reinforcers, but the match was weaker.

Buskist et al. (1988) and Allan et al. (1991) already showed that systematic tangible assessments beat staff guesswork. Burford et al. (2003) now asks, "Do we even need the tangible stuff?" The answer is mostly yes for pictures.

Villafaña et al. (2023) later extended the same idea to food-selective children. They added a quick taste after the picture choice and got results that matched full edible assessments without triggering refusal behavior.

Kang et al. (2013) swept up this study in a bigger review. Their take: pictorial tools are handy, but run a brief reinforcer test if the client has limited sight or naming skills.

You can carry a small deck of laminated pictures instead of a box of toys. This saves setup time and keeps assessments moving in classrooms, clinics, or homes. Start with pictures; if the learner’s choices don’t hold up in the reinforcer test, switch to tangible items for that person.