Efficiency of Forced Choice Preference Assessment: Comparing Multiple Presentation Techniques.

Abstract

The preferences of individuals with developmental disabilities have been studied since Ferrari and Harris (1981) investigated the reinforcing properties, limits, and motivating potentials of sensory stimuli among children with autism. Over the past twenty-eight years, research has improved preference assessment methods and enabled practitioners to more accurately assess preference. Graff and Ciccone (2002) defined preference assessments as those methods that ... "... effectively identify functional reinforcers for individuals with developmental disabilities" (p. 85). Penrod, Wallace, and Dyer (2008) wrote that "preference assessments produce a relative ranking of stimulus preferences that is based on the relative amount of time with which the stimuli were manipulated or the number of times one stimulus was chosen relative to other stimuli" (p.177). Accurately identifying the preferences of individuals with severe disabilities is essential to their skill acquisition and personal well-being. According to Parsons and Reid (1990), although the need to make choices is essential to one's well-being, persons with developmental disabilities do not receive as many opportunities to make choices when compared to their typical counterparts. The identification of preferred items and activities that may serve as reinforcers for these individuals is critical when developing programming that will be the most effective at increasing desired skills while reducing challenging behaviors. Many different methods have been utilized and developed to assess preference. Variations across methods comprise three major factors : (1) how the stimuli are presented to the individual in order for a preference to be demonstrated, (2) the nature of the stimuli being presented, and (3) whether or not the individual has access to the selected item immediately upon selection. With regard to how stimuli are presented during a preference assessment, there are distinctly different procedures, including parent or caregiver surveys (questionnaires about what the individual likes), single stimulus presentation (when one item is presented at a time and engagement time is measured, Pace, Ivancic, Edwards, Iwata, & Page, 1985), multiple stimulus presentation with or without replacement (an array of items is presented and the participant selects one of the items, which is either replaced or removed from further presentations; e.g., Windsor, Piche, & Locke, 1994), and forced choice presentations (two items are presented at a time, all items are paired against each other as described by Fisher, Piazza, Bowman , Hagopian, Owens, & Slevin, 1992). When considering what type of stimuli are used in these assessments, some researchers have used actual items, while others have used pictures of actual items and/or verbal presentation. Lastly, in some preference studies, researchers have given the individual access to the selected item and other researchers prevented such access. Research has shown there to be no one best method. Conyers, Doole, Vause, Harapiak, Yu, and Martin (2002); deVries, Yu, Sakko, Wirth, Walters, Marion, and Martin (2005); and Schwartzman, Yu, and Martin (2003) compared actual items, pictures, and verbal forced choice presentation methods. The results of these studies suggest that assessment of basic discrimination skills such as a two choice visual discrimination, matching to sample visual discrimination, and a two choice auditory-visual combined discrimination can be useful in predicting the effectiveness of different presentation methods. They concluded that the stimulus modalities used in preference assessments needed to be matched to the discrimination skills of the participant. Cohen-Almeida, Graff, and Ahearn (2000) compared assessments using actual items with access and verbal presentation with access. The two assessments identified similar high preference items for four of six participants. …