Determining Reinforcers and Increasing Motivation for Students with Autism: An Action Research Paper on Preference and Reinforcement Assessments

Preference and reinforcement assessments are tools used by educators and researchers alike in order to determine which stimuli students with severe disabilities prefer and find reinforcing. There are a variety of preference assessments and there are a variety of ways in which to conduct a reinforcement assessment. This particular study was implemented in order to determine if the results of two particular preference assessments (Paired Choice and Multiple Stimulus without Replacement) can identify stimuli that are not only preferred, but reinforcing for a particular student with autism. Will a stimulus identified as preferred by the original preference assessments increase the desired behavior when the reinforcement assessment is administered or will the preferred stimulus fail to do so? The results of the study suggest that the highly preferred stimulus was found to be highly reinforcing for this particular student with autism. In addition, the assessment procedure that was followed by the researcher was determined to be a successful method for identifying a reinforcer or reward item that could be applied to daily instruction for the special education student under study.