Competing Items Preference Assessment
Competing Items Preference Assessment
Sometimes we have a client come to us that displays high rates of stereotypic behavior, or perhaps socially mediated challenging behavior, and we can feel a little unsure where to begin.
Today’s topic will cover a simple way to begin solving the challenge of stereotypic behavior.
High rates of challenging behavior typically prevent clients from being able to learn or socialise and require smart behavior intervention plans, (BIP) written by a BCBA, to begin reducing such behaviors. Best practice will always lead to a functional behavior assessment (FBA) being completed, and specifically a functional analysis. Whilst an FBA can highlight the function behind the clients behavior, it is then left up to us as the professional to create suitable behavior intervention strategies. Our goal is simple; to help our client become independent in daily activities, socialise appropriately, integrate into society, and learn new skills. How we get there can be the difficult part to figure out.
One tool I like to use when creating a BIP is a competing preference assessment. I’m sure most people reading this will be familiar with a preference assessment, but few would have heard of a competing preference assessment.
A competing preference assessment is extremely similar to a standard single preference assessment, and it helps us determine the relative preference between items/activities and challenging behavior. We do this by measuring interaction with the presented items/activities and the occurrence of challenging behavior. This information is key for the development of a really great BIP. I hear you asking why? Think matching law and concurrent schedules of reinforcement.
Our competing preference assessment tells us where our client is most likely to ‘allocate their responding’. In super simple terms, this means that we can find items/activities that our client will choose instead of engaging challenging behavior [typically automatically reinforced]. Once we know this, we can program these reinforcers in to our BIP in varying ways. A few examples could be non-contingent reinforcement or differential reinforcement schedules.
Sounds great right? Well, it’s about to get a whole lot better. Click the link below to get a free download of our competing preference assessment datasheet.
