New England Center for Children.
Department of Psychology, Western New England University.
J Appl Behav Anal. 2021 Apr;54(2):684-699. doi: 10.1002/jaba.807. Epub 2021 Jan 20.
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.
行为分析师已经开发出了一整套评估偏好的技术，但很少有研究评估偏好随时间变化的程度。在这项研究中，对 4 名发育障碍者进行了为期 1 年的每月一次的配对刺激可食用物、休闲和社会偏好评估以及每两个月一次的强化物评估。在所有参与者中，短期（即每月）偏好对可食用物品最稳定（平均斯皮尔曼等级相关系数=0.79），对休闲物品（平均=0.66）和社会刺激（平均=0.50）的稳定性较差。通过将第一次偏好评估与 12 个月后的最后一次评估进行比较，来评估偏好的长期稳定性。在所有参与者中，可食用物品的平均斯皮尔曼等级相关系数为 0.63，社会刺激为 0.33，休闲物品为 0.19。对于所有参与者，在强化物评估期间，可食用物品与最高反应率相关。讨论了确定进行偏好和强化物评估频率的建议。
