The use of formal preference assessments, including paired-stimulus preference assessments, is widely utilized. The basic purpose of using them is to help determine which items to use as reinforcers during the intervention. There is also a second way that exists and can be used to determine potential reinforcers is to analyze multiple dimensions of a stimulus at the moment, a procedure known as in-the-moment reinforcer analysis.

Even tho the paired-stimulus preference assessments are widely used, there is no experimental evidence that extensive advance preference assessments actually produce higher rates of learning than in-the-moment reinforcer analysis. The present study was done with the purpose to compare the rates of learning on a simple expressive labeling task when correct responses were reinforced with items selected based on extensive formal paired-preference assessments in comparison to the items that were selected by a teacher on the basis of the in-the-moment analysis of reinforcer effects.

The study concluded through its findings that there is no clear difference in skill acquisition, but there were clear differences in terms of efficiency and maintenance.

Reference: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1088357616645329

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