Edible and leisure items are often used in behavioral intervention to teach skills or reduce problem behavior. Previous research conducted investigating preference displacement between edible and leisure items has shown mixed results. Researchers attribute this to potentially present motiving operations such as satiation and deprivation of items. The purpose of the current study is to further manipulate the motivating operations (MOs) in combined class multiple stimulus without replacement preference assessments. Multiple stimulus without replacement preference assessments were conducted to identify highly preferred stimuli from both edible and leisure classes to use in combined assessments. In the deprivation combined class assessments either edible or leisure items were deprived for 24 hours prior to the assessments. Following the pre-satiation condition the two non-deprived items were satiated using a pre-determined number of edible stimuli or time. The combined assessment was then repeated to assess the effects of satiation. Preliminary results suggest that effects of satiation and deprivation are present, but that MOs do not reliably predict preference displacement or outcome of one class of stimuli over another.
