Evaluation of Multiple-Stimulus Preference Assessment with Adults with Developmental Disabilities

We compared multiple-stimulus without replacement. (MSWO) and paired-stimulus (PS) procedures to assess stimulus preferences of adults with developmental disabilities. Stimulus preference rankings for six food items obtained by the two procedures were positively correlated for all participants (M = .72, range .41 to 1). However, four participants did not select the most-preferred stimuli identified by the PS assessments as their most-preferred stimuli during the MSWO assessments. Preferred-stimulus selection percentages for these participants generally increased during MSWO as the number of stimuli decreased across trials. For participants who selected the same stimuli as their most-preferred in both procedures, their preferred-stimulus selection percentages generally declined during MSWO as the number of stimuli decreased across trials.