Assessing preference for types of social interaction

Abstract

To date, few researchers have evaluated methods for assessing preference for social interactions. Due to concerns that commonly used stimulus preference assessment methods may be inappropriate, or at least cumbersome, for the assessment of social reinforcers, we developed and evaluated a new method of assessing preference for social interactions. A social interaction preference assessment (SIPA) and a concurrent operant reinforcer assessment were conducted with five participants diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. A differentially preferred and reinforcing social interaction was identified for all five participants. The SIPA procedures, results, and the implications of these results are discussed.

Response to name in children with autism: Treatment, generalization, and maintenance

“…A wider range of social interactions (e.g., tickles, physical play, praise) could have also been evaluated as reinforcers for RTN in the current study, after the Social condition and before tangible reinforcement. Preference or reinforcer assessments for social interactions (e.g., Clay, Samaha, Bloom, Bogoev, & Boyle, 2013;Morris & Vollmer, 2019) could be useful for identifying such reinforcers in future studies.…”

A comparison of methods for assessing preference for social interactions

“…Recently, researchers have evaluated several different methods for assessing preference for social interactions (Clay et al, ; Huntington & Higbee, ; Kelly et al, ; Lang et al, ; Morris & Vollmer, , ; Nuernberger et al, ; Wolfe et al, ). Each of these studies described a method of preference assessment that was effective at identifying preferred and reinforcing social interactions.…”

“…These preference assessment variations may have implications for the accuracy of outcomes obtained, the feasibility of conducting such a preference assessment due to resource constraints (Graff & Karsten, ), and the skills that must be present in an individual's repertoire for the assessment to be the most appropriate and useful. For example, for individuals who have sufficient conditional discrimination skills, it may be unnecessary to use additional resources (e.g., time, materials) to conduct the assessment with people (e.g., Clay et al, ) or to construct videos of social interaction (e.g., Wolfe et al, ) when a picture‐based preference assessment may be just as accurate (e.g., Kelly et al, ; Morris & Vollmer, ). Similarly, for an individual with a less developed conditional discrimination repertoire, it may be efficacious to conduct a preference assessment with more frequent or extended exposure to the contingencies of selection (e.g., Lang et al, ; Morris & Vollmer, ), instead of a more efficient assessment (e.g., Kelly et al, ), as it may result in a more accurate, and therefore useful, hierarchy.…”

“…In addition to the utility of the PSPA and MSWO, another preference assessment that may be useful for identifying preferred forms of social interaction is the social interaction preference assessment (SIPA; Morris & Vollmer, , ). The SIPA is similar to the MSWO in that both assessments involve the presentation of pictorial representations of social stimuli, the presentation of all stimuli in the array at the beginning of each assessment, and require a selection response.…”

Erratum

“…Due to a production error, Morris and Vollmer (2020) included an incorrect citation throughout the manuscript (and in the reference section). In these cases, Morris and Vollmer (2020) was cited where Morris and Vollmer () should have been.…”