Reinforcer Assessment Paper

increases in the setting where the stimulus is received contingently even though it is being received non-contingently in the other setting, it is assumed to be an effective reinforcer. One benefit of the study is that it can identify in which settings or conditions a particular stimulus may be reinforcing. A risk of this schedule is that it is not known whether the effectiveness of the stimuli will generalize to other settings and conditions. This assessment also does not evaluate the effectiveness of the reinforcer when the response demands increase.

The benefit of a progressive ratio reinforcer assessment is the ability to evaluate the relative effectiveness of a stimulus as response requirements change and increase. In this assessment, the number of responses required to contact reinforcement is gradually increased until the response rate declines. This assessment can help determine which reinforcers work best with low demands and which might best be reserved for more demanding tasks.

Articles with Examples of Reinforcer Assessments Ortega, Iwata, Nogales-Gonzalez, & Frades (2012) conducted preference assessments with 14 individuals with dementia and found a preference for leisure items over edible items in all individuals. A reinforcement

Subject one and two had only the target response activity available, finger tapping to increase a counter by one unit. Subject three had three available activities, the finger tapping, playing a keyboard or making contact with mega-blocks, the positions of which were alternated across sessions. This permitted an extended her study to include a multiple baseline across behaviors and reversal design. There was no interaction and no reinforcer was received for target responses. Response rates were low in the baseline condition for all participants with all