Behavioral Economics in MRDD and Behavior Disorders

MRDD 和行为障碍的行为经济学

基本信息

批准号：
7383781
负责人：
ISER DELEON
金额：
$ 16.16万
依托单位：
HUGO W. MOSER RES INST KENNEDY KRIEGER
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
财政年份：
2006
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2006-05-01 至 2010-02-28
项目状态：
已结题

项目摘要

Behavioral assessments of severe behavior disorders of children with developmental disabilities have revealed that behavioral problems are oftenmaintained 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 ofpsychologica 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 priniciples can be brought to bear on the orderly choice responding of individuals with developmental disabilities. Two subsequent experiments willemploy these same principles to determine the conditions under which behavioral interventions based onproviding reinforcers that are functional dissimilar to those historically produced by behavior problems may be expected to have superior clinical effects than interventions based onproviding functionally similar outcomes.

对发育障碍儿童严重行为障碍的行为评估揭示了行为问题通常是由于其功能结果（或增强剂）所阐明的。为了例如，儿童可能会因问题而引起照顾者的关注或逃避教学要求行为。基于此框架的行为干预措施包括心理学的当前标准关心。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方案产生与问题行为相同或相似的增强剂的行为，从而消除了需求让孩子从事异常行为。许多研究证实了这些干预措施在最初的条件下，但其他人则表明其治疗作用有时随着对增强剂的反应比率增加（或“变薄”）以减少干预措施自然环境（例如教室）实用。行为经济学领域的原则可以帮助确定可以预期可以维持其行为干预措施的条件增强交付时间表的变化的影响。具体而言，行为经济概念替代性和需求弹性表明对商品的需求（从行为术语中，选择一个加固器而不是同时可用的增强剂）是其成本的联合功能（数量生产增强器所需的响应）以及同时可用的商品的程度更替代。这些发现对行为干预的影响是这个问题当可用替代方案时，行为可能更有可能随着时间表的变化而重新出现在功能上相似。因此，这些原则矛盾地表明，提供相同或取决于替代行为的类似结果可能并不总是是最好的治疗选择治疗行为障碍。在当前的建议中，两项研究将扩大试点数据，证明行为经济上可以依靠发育障碍。随后的两个实验将雇用这些相同的原则，以确定根据哪些行为干预措施的条件，基于功能相差的固定增强剂对于那些历史上由行为问题产生的人可能会比干预措施基于功能相似的结果。