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Reinforcer choice as an antecedent versus consequence.

Charles Peterson1, Dorothea C Lerman1, Melissa A Nissen1

  • 1University of Houston-Clear Lake.

Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis
|January 22, 2016
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Children with autism showed increased task responding when they could choose rewards before completing tasks. This antecedent choice strategy appears more effective than offering choices after task completion for motivating behavior in autism interventions.

Keywords:
antecedentautismreinforcer choicetask performance

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Area of Science:

  • Behavioral psychology
  • Developmental psychology
  • Autism Spectrum Disorder research

Background:

  • Understanding motivation in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is crucial for effective interventions.
  • Choice-making opportunities are known to influence engagement and behavior in various populations.
  • Previous research suggests reinforcement procedures can be tailored to individual preferences.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the impact of antecedent versus consequent reinforcement choice on task responding in children with autism.
  • To determine if children with autism prefer choosing reinforcement before or after task completion.
  • To examine how varying response requirements interact with reinforcement choice conditions.

Main Methods:

  • Four children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder participated in the study.
  • Participants were presented with opportunities to choose preferred stimuli either before (antecedent choice) or after (consequent choice) task completion.
  • The response requirement for reinforcement was systematically increased within each session.

Main Results:

  • Two out of four children demonstrated higher levels of task responding when reinforcement choice was provided as an antecedent to task completion.
  • Three out of the four children exhibited a preference for the antecedent choice condition over the consequent choice condition.
  • The study observed the effects of systematically increasing response requirements on behavior under different choice conditions.

Conclusions:

  • Providing reinforcement choice as an antecedent to task completion may be a more effective strategy for increasing task responding in some children with autism.
  • Children with autism may prefer having control over reinforcement selection prior to engaging in a task.
  • These findings have implications for designing individualized and motivating behavioral interventions for autism.