Behavioral Economics in MRDD and Behavior Disorders

MRDD 和行为障碍的行为经济学

• 批准号: 7030670
• 负责人: ISER DELEON
• 金额: $ 16.69万
• 依托单位: HUGO W. MOSER RES INST KENNEDY KRIEGER
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-05-01 至 2009-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7030670
• 关键词: adolescence (12-20); autism; behavior modification; behavior therapy; behavioral /social science research tag; brain injury; child behavior disorders; child psychology; choice; clinical research; developmental disease /disorder; developmental psychology; human subject; mental retardation; middle childhood (6-11); motivation; psychological reinforcement; psychological tests; reinforcer

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Behavioral assessments of severe behavior disorders of children with developmental disabilities have revealed that behavioral problems are often maintained by their functional outcomes (or reinforcers). For example, children may gain caregiver attention or escape from instructional demands via their problem behavior. Behavioral interventions built upon this framework comprise the current standard of psychological care. These interventions typically involve teaching or otherwise promoting appropriate, alternative behaviors that produce identical or similar reinforcers as the problem behavior, thereby obviating the need for the child to engage in the aberrant behavior. Numerous studies have validated the effectiveness of these interventions under initial conditions, but others have revealed that their therapeutic effects sometimes diminish as the ratio of responses to reinforcers is increased (or "thinned") to make the interventions practical in natural environments (e.g., classrooms). Principles from the field of behavioral economics can help to determine the conditions under which behavioral interventions can be expected to maintain their effects across changes in reinforcement delivery schedules. Specifically, the behavioral economic concepts of substitutability and demand elasticity have revealed that demand for a commodity (in behavioral terms, choosing one reinforcer over concurrently available reinforcers) is a joint function of its cost (the number of responses required to produce that reinforcer) and the degree to which concurrently available commodities are more substitutable. The implication of these findings for behavioral interventions is that problem behaviors may be more likely to reemerge as schedule thinning progresses when the available alternatives are functionally similar. These principles thus suggest, paradoxically, that the provision of the same or similar outcome contingent upon an alternative behavior may not always be the best therapeutic option in treating behavior disorders. In the current proposal, two studies will extend out pilot data demonstrating how behavioral economic principles can be brought to bear on the orderly choice responding of individuals with developmental disabilities. Two subsequent experiments will employ these same principles to determine the conditions under which behavioral interventions based on providing reinforcers that are functional dissimilar to those historically produced by behavior problems may be expected to have superior clinical effects than interventions based on providing functionally similar outcomes.

描述（由申请人提供）：对发育障碍儿童的严重行为障碍的行为评估表明，行为问题通常通过其功能结果（或增强剂）来维持。例如，儿童可以通过问题行为获得照顾者的关注或逃避教学要求。基于此框架的行为干预措施包括当前心理护理标准。这些干预措施通常涉及教学或以其他方式促进适当的替代行为，这些行为与问题行为相同，从而避免了孩子从事异常行为的需求。大量研究证实了这些干预措施在初始条件下的有效性，但其他研究则表明，随着对钢筋的反应比率增加（或“稀释”）以使自然环境中的干预措施（例如教室）增加（或“稀释”）。行为经济学领域的原则可以帮助确定可以期望行为干预措施在强化交付计划中保持其影响的条件。具体而言，替代性和需求弹性的行为经济概念表明，对商品的需求（用行为术语，选择一种增强器而不是同时可获得的增强剂）是其成本的共同功能（生产该增强器所需的响应数量）和同时可用的商品的程度更具替代品。这些发现对行为干预的含义是，当可用替代方案在功能上相似时，问题行为可能更有可能重新出现，因为计划稀疏。因此，这些原则矛盾地表明，提供相同或相似的结果取决于替代行为可能并不总是在治疗行为障碍方面的最佳治疗选择。在当前的提案中，两项研究将扩大试点数据，证明如何将行为经济原则带入发育障碍个人的有序选择反应。随后的两个实验将采用这些相同的原则来确定基于提供与行为问题历史上产生的功能相差的增强剂的行为干预措施的条件可能会比基于功能上相似的结果具有优势的临床效应。