Abstract
Reinforcers frequently chosen may not offer the same nutritional value as fruits and vegetables. Prior researchers have explored preferences and the effectiveness of salty and sweet foods compared to fruits and vegetables, but the criteria for demonstrating effectiveness have often been arbitrary rather than academic. In addition, it remains unclear how the integration of these potentially nutritious reinforcers might affect learning or hinder learning efficiency. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate whether introducing fruits or vegetables as potential reinforcers could sustain responding achieved with salty or sweet reinforcers. The implications of this model for incorporating a variety of reinforcers while maintaining responding are also discussed.
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All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.
Notes
From here on, we will refer to the fruit or vegetable condition as the fruit condition and the salty or sweet condition as the sweet condition because the highest preferred foods identified during the combined MSWO preference assessment were fruits or sweet foods, for both Oscar and Ned.
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This research was conducted in partial fulfillment of the first author’s doctoral degree from the University of Florida. We thank the Florida Autism Center for their collaboration on the project.
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Kronfli, F.R., Vollmer, T.R., Hack, G.O. et al. Optimizing Learning Outcomes when Teaching Sight Words using Fruits and Vegetables as Reinforcers. Behav Analysis Practice (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-024-00912-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-024-00912-6