Comparison of high and low preferred topographies of contingent attention during discrete trial training

Assessing preference for types of social interaction

“…With that said, the types of social interaction that did reinforce the participants' behavior were somewhat different in nature than those interactions seen in prior research. For example, social interactions such as praise, high fives, smiles, fist bumps, and thumbs up were included in preference assessments and consistently selected by participants across several preference assessments in previous studies (e.g., Kelly et al, ; Lang et al, ). On the other hand, being tickled was the only consequence shown to be preferred and reinforcing for more than half the participants in the current study.…”

“…First, the nature of social interactions is such that they cannot be placed on a surface and directly approached or selected (like edible or leisure items). However, potential solutions such as using picture cards (e.g., Kelly, Roscoe, Hanley, & Schlichenmeyer, 2014), therapists (e.g., Clay, Samaha, Bloom, Bogoev, & Boyle, 2013), or videos (e.g., Wolfe, Kunnavatana, & Shoemaker, 2018) as selection stimuli have been evaluated. Second, the idiosyncratic differences in preferred social interactions across participants increase the response effort involved with planning and conducting such assessments.…”

“…For the most part, however, such extension of the preference assessment literature has been accomplished by substituting picture card selection for the approach or selection responses that are typically recorded. For example, Kelly et al (2014) assessed preferences for seven different types of social interactions with singlestimulus preference assessments and PSPA. The PSPA more accurately and reliably identified preference for and relative reinforcing efficacy of the different types of social interaction for all participants.…”

“…Clay et al, 2013). Lang et al (2014) used pretraining sessions that lasted 20 and 40 min while the other researchers (Kelly et al, 2014;Nuernberger et al, 2012) conducted exposures to the contingencies prior to the beginning of the assessment to aid the development of stimulus control.…”

Discrete Trial Training

“…Research has demonstrated the importance of using highly preferred reinforcers during DTT, which are typically identifi ed via systematic preference assessments (e.g., Lang et al, 2014 ). A procedural variation that may further enhance the effectiveness of DTT is to give the learner opportunities to choose the reinforcer at the moment that it is earned.…”