Date of Award

Spring 5-14-2025

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

MA Applied Behavior Analysis

Department

Professional Psychology and Family Therapy

Advisor

Lauren Goodwyn, PhD

Committee Member

Frank Cicero, PhD

Committee Member

Danielle Cicalese, MA

Keywords

autism spectrum disorder, paired-stimulus preference assessment, social interaction, reinforcer assessment

Abstract

It may be the case that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) prefer receiving individualized social interaction in addition to tangible stimuli rather than just receiving access to only tangible stimuli. In Experiment 1, we compared the results of paired-stimulus preference assessment (PSPA) procedures for the Tangible condition (toys only), Tangible+SI condition (toys with social interaction), and Combined condition (toys alone and toys with social interaction) to evaluate whether making social interaction available affected toy preference for children with ASD. A social interaction pre-assessment PSPA was conducted to help determine a singular highly-preferred social interaction for each participant to pair with the tangible stimuli. In Experiment 2, a concurrent operant reinforcer assessment was conducted to determine the reinforcing efficacy of each participant’s most-preferred Tangible and Tangible+SI stimuli. Experiment 1 showed that the three participants who completed the experiment preferred a Tangible+SI stimulus the most when put into one assessment. Experiment 2 results showed that for two out of three participants, the Combined PSPA from Experiment 1 was accurate in predicting the participants’ reinforcer assessment results.

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