Episode 238 - Moving Away from Edible Reinforcement

IMPORTANT NOTICE: To earn CEUs for listening, you MUST sign up and listen to this episode on our website to get credit. To listen for the fun of learning? Just push play! Email us at [email protected] for further assistance. While we all love a good snack, and we can all agree the we'd do almost anything for a Klondike bar, there's more to life than food. So why do behavior analysts get stuck on using edibles as the be all and end all of reinforcement in behavior acquisition? This week, we take a look at the research to see if edible reinforcers really should be selling like hotcakes or if there's more to reinforcement than chocolate-covered potato chips. This episode is available for 1.0 LEARNING CEU. Articles discussed this episode: Ciccone, F.J., Graff, R.B., & Ahearn, W.H. (2006). Stimulus preference assessments and the utility of a moderate category. Behavioral Intervention, 21, 59-63. doi: 10.1002/bin.190 Clark, S.B., Call, N.A., Simmons, C.A., Scheithauer, M.C., Muething, C.S., & Parks, N. (2020). Effects of magnitude on the displacment of leisure items by edible items during preference assessments. Behavior Modification, 44, 727-745. doi: 10.1177/0145445519843937 Fahmie, T.A., Iwata, B.A., & Jann, K.E. (2015). Comparison of edible and leisure reinforcers. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 48, 331-343. doi: 10.1002/jaba.200 Gover, H.C., Fahmie, T.A., & McKeown, C.A. (2019). A review of environmental enrichment as treatment for problem behavior maintained by automatic reinforcement. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 52, 299-314. doi: 10.1002/jaba.508