An evaluation of preference stability within MSWO preference assessments for children with autism

Abstract

Previous research has commonly evaluated preference stability over time and across multiple preference assessment administrations. No studies have evaluated shifts in preference across consecutive rounds of a single preference assessment, where rounds refer to each time the experimenter resets the stimulus-presentation array. The purpose of the present study was to examine the stability of stimulus selections across successive rounds of a multiple-stimulus-without-replacement (MSWO) preference assessment with different classes of stimuli for children with autism. The study involved a secondary data analysis and calculation of preference stability across consecutive rounds using Spearman rank-order correlation coefficients (Spearman's ρ) for 17 participants across 40 MSWO preference assessments. Patterns of preference stability were observed in 24 out of the 40 assessments (60%) indicating that children's preferences in this study were slightly more likely to be classified as stable than other observed patterns of responding.

Evaluating convergent validity between RAISD and MSWO rankings across informants

“…stimuli tend to remain stable (for Sam and William; Zhou et al, 2001;Kelley et al, 2016) but also with the finding that preferences, occasionally, may be variable (Jamie and Blaine; Melanson et al, 2023). Although preference variability is often observed with edible stimuli (e.g., Ciccone et al, 2007), this study supports the notion that leisure stimuli also experience variability to a similar degree.…”

“…The MSWO is an effective and flexible tool frequently used by behavior analysts in home and clinical settings (Kang et al, 2013). Studies have evaluated MSWO procedures in several respects, such as the time required for completion (Carr et al, 2000;Richman et al, 2016), the mode of administration , reinforcer efficacy (Call et al, 2012), and stability of selection across the assessment (Melanson et al, 2023). Although the procedures for presenting objects for a preference assessment have received substantial attention in the research literature, the procedures for selecting stimuli to include in a preference assessment and the stability from initial selection to final outcomes of preference assessments have not.…”

Single‐ vs. combined‐category preference assessments for edible, leisure, and social‐interaction stimuli

“…Since the publication of DeLeon et al (1997) several studies have replicated the finding that combining stimulus classes in preference-assessment arrays can result in displacement effects and potentially false-negative outcomes for identifying stimuli that will function as reinforcers (Andakyan et al, 2016;Bojak & Carr, 1999;Conine & Vollmer, 2019;Fahmie et al, 2015;Melanson et al, 2023;Sipila-Thomas et al, 2021;Slanzi et al, 2020). In each of these studies, the authors included combined-stimulus arrays of edible and leisure items.…”