Development of an Assessment Method for Deciding on Interventions to Facilitate Choice Behavior: Children With Severe Intellectual Disabilities and Autism Spectrum Disorder

― ― An assessment test was developed that could provide information for deciding what intervention methods to use with children with severe intellectual disabilities and autism spectrum disorder, in order to facilitate choice behavior; also, the predictive validity of the test was examined. Participants were 3 boys with severe intellectual disabilities and autism spectrum disorder (ages: 3 years 7 months; 6 years 0 months; 4 years 8 months) who were attending a child development support center. The choice test was composed of 2 reinforcers (snacks and toys) and 2 choice dimensions (tangible items and photographs). The assessment scored the number of choices (1 to 3) in order to classify whether a child’s diffıculty in making selections was because of the low reinforcer value of an item or because the child had not learned skills needed for discriminating objects of choice. After the choice assessment, the children were trained with discriminative stimulus procedures to develop skills needed for discriminating choice objects. Two of the children were taught to estimate the reinforcement value of an item through assessment of their preferences and a revision of the list of items. The choice behaviors of the 3 children increased after the choice assessment and intervention. These results suggest that the choice assessment test could predict each child’s diffıculty in making a choice and could be used to develop interventions that might be effective.