New England Center For Children: Stimulus Preference Assessment

Abstract

An assessment such as an edible stimulus preference assessment is useful when needing to know what can be used to encourage a student with autism to do their work. Sometimes students are having an off day or aren’t feeling like doing work that day but when presented with something they like and being told they are able to receive it by continuing their work. Running this assessment helps those that work with the student know what reinforcements will persuade the student to continue their work. The assessment is set up with 56 trails with 8 different edibles and each edible is presented 7 times as well as switching from being presented on the left and right side. It was run in one session which is one hour with the student. Through the assessment, it was discovered that the student preferred sweet snacks over salty snacks. Through my interpretation, sweet snacks are highly preferred when working with this specific student, especially chocolate covered pretzels.