Evaluating the stability, validity, and utility of hierarchies produced by the Social Interaction Preference Assessment

Morris and Vollmer (2020) evaluated a novel method of assessing preference for social interaction, which they called the Social Interaction Preference Assessment (SIPA), and found it often produced hierarchies similar to a concurrent operant reinforcer assessment. We replicated and extended these findings. In study 1, we evaluated the stability of the SIPA hierarchies by conducting multiple SIPAs with 5 participants diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In Study 2, we evaluated the validity and utility of these hierarchies by providing different social interactions as consequences for skill acquisition tasks with 3 participants from the first study. Varying degrees of stability in the SIPA hierarchies and a high level of correspondence between these hierarchies and rates of acquisition during the reinforcer assessment were observed. These findings and their implications are discussed.