A client can help choose high-probability requests by identifying familiar, comfortable, or meaningful actions, yet the team still needs direct evidence that each request is completed often in the relevant context. Preference and response probability answer different questions. Offer accessible choices, keep ordinary supports available, allow changes or refusal, screen for pain and fatigue, and avoid turning playful interaction into a hidden demand chain.
Let the client choose high-probability requests
Offer several age-respectful options through the person's usual communication mode. Explain that a chosen action may be used before another planned request. Record what the person selected, declined, or changed and which choice conditions applied.
Verify probability separately
In the medical study, caregivers screened candidate requests repeatedly and retained those completed at least 80% in that study's procedure. That threshold belongs to the study. A practice must define its own clinically justified screening rule, period, context, and review process.
Avoid a stale request pool
A study of variant and invariant sequences with young children who had emotional-behavioral disorders found initial gains with a repeated sequence that did not maintain, while varied sequences produced maintained increases in the measured social bids. The small study supports checking repetition effects, not a requirement to vary requests.
Keep communication and assent active
The Ethics Code addresses client involvement, understandable communication, consent and assent when applicable, and evaluation. ASHA supports continuous AAC access. A client can change a choice after experiencing the sequence.
A practical example
Ren selects tapping a drum, choosing a color, and moving one game piece as possible warm-ups. Screening across five comparable sessions shows completion in 5/5, 4/5, and 2/5. The first two enter the pool; the third remains a preferred activity rather than receiving a high-probability label.
Questions families can use
How did the person choose? Which requests were screened? Can a preferred action still be low probability? How often are options refreshed? Can the person decline the sequence while accepting the later activity?
Sources
- Behavior Analyst Certification Board, BCBA Test Content Outline, 6th edition
- Shillingsburg and colleagues, Increasing Compliance With Medical Examination Requests Directed to Children With Autism
- Davis and Reichle, Variant and Invariant High-Probability Requests
- Mace and colleagues, Effects of Reinforcer Quality on Behavioral Momentum
- Behavior Analyst Certification Board, Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts
- American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Augmentative and Alternative Communication
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