The development of a broad leisure repertoire for individuals with developmental disabilities can improve quality of life (Lancioni, Singh, O’Relly, Oliva, & Basili, 2005), promote social interactions (Dodd, Zabriskie, Widmer, & Eggett, 2009), and compete with problem behavior (Lindberg, Iwata, Roscoe, Worsdell, & Hanley, 2003). An important component of achieving benefits of leisure may be creating a repertoire of activities that the participant chooses to engage in, absent arbitrary reinforcers. However, there has been limited research on efforts to increase the reinforcing value of leisure activities following mastery. The purpose of the current study is to evaluate first whether teaching a skill to mastery produces an increase in preference for the activity and if not, secondly, to evaluate additional measures that could increase preference. Preference assessments were conducted concurrently with skill acquisition sessions in Phase 1. In Phase 2, concurrent chain assessments are used to evaluate potentially reinforcing, typically occurring, added components to each targeted activity. Preferred components were identified and added to the activities in the preference assessment to evaluate whether preference increased. Results showed that teaching the activity alone was not sufficient to increase preference of the activity for most participants. Introducing identified, contextual reinforcers was effective for most acitivities. In a few cases introduction of arbitrary reinforcers and stereotypy treatment were necessary. These data were presented at BABAT 2015.
Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC)
Autism Research Database (AFD)
