An Innovative Preference Assessment Method and Subsequent Teaching to Expand Requesting Skills In Children with Limited Preferences

Background: Early language instruction for individuals with autism often focuses on teaching functional communication skills such as requesting.  When teaching requesting, incorporating a variety of highly preferred items and activities for the individual to ask for is vital to the success of language programming. Individuals with autism, however, often present with a restricted range of interests and preferences.  These limited preferences can present substantial challenges to clinicians once requesting skills for the few primary reinforcers have already been acquired and the individual’s requesting repertoire has plateaued.  Therefore, innovative approaches to assessing additional items that can be used to expand requesting repertoires are needed for continued language development. 

Objectives: The current study sought to identify a procedure to assess preference for items in the environment that are deemed “typically neutral” but may become preferred under certain conditions.  A second objective of the current project was to subsequently teach functional requesting skills for the “typically neutral” items under particular conditions to further develop requesting repertoires.

Methods: Three children diagnosed with autism and one child diagnosed with PPD-NOS and traumatic brain injury between the ages of 5 and 8 years were included in the study.   For each participant a preferred item with an associated “typically neutral” item was selected (e.g., Ice cream and spoon, juice box and straw, fruit cup and fork).  Preference for the “typically neutral” item (i.e., fork, spoon, straw) was assessed under varying conditions.  More specifically, preference for the associated neutral item was assessed either in the presence of the associated preferred item or in the absence of the associated preferred item.  In experiment 1 preference was assessed using a modified version of the paired-choice (PC) preference assessment and in experiment 2, preference was assessed using a modified version of the multiple stimulus without replacement (MSWO) preference assessment.  In each assessment, the “typically neutral” item was presented in an array of preferred items.  During the motivation present condition, the preferred item associated with the neutral item was presented to the child throughout the assessment.  During the motivation absent condition, the preferred item associated with the neutral item was not present. The dependent variable was change in choice responding allocated to the “typically neutral” item. Subsequent to the preference assessment, request training was implemented.

Results: Results indicated that all participants chose the “typically neutral” item more often in the presence of the associated preferred item compared to when the preferred item was absent.  Subsequent request training was successful.

Conclusions: The current project demonstrates a data based method for assessing momentary preference for “typically neutral” items in order to expand functional communication skills in children diagnosed with autism. Both the paired-choice and MSWO preference assessments produced similar results.