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，行为问题通常是由其功能结果（或强化物）维持的。例如，儿童可能会通过他们的问题行为获得看护者的关注或逃避教学要求。建立在这一框架之上的行为干预构成了当前的心理护理标准。这些干预措施通常涉及教导或以其他方式促进适当的替代行为，这些行为产生与问题行为相同或相似的强化物，从而避免儿童参与异常行为。大量研究已经验证了这些干预措施在初始条件下的有效性，但其他研究表明，随着对强化物的反应比例增加（或“变薄”）以使干预措施在自然环境（例如教室）中实用，它们的治疗效果有时会减弱。 ）。行为经济学领域的原理可以帮助确定在何种条件下行为干预可以在强化实施计划的变化中保持其效果。具体而言，可替代性和需求弹性的行为经济学概念表明，对商品的需求（在行为方面，选择一种强化物而不是同时可用的强化物）是其成本（产生该强化物所需的反应数量）和同时可用的商品更具可替代性的程度。这些发现对行为干预的影响是，当可用的替代方案功能相似时，随着日程的精简，问题行为可能更有可能重新出现。因此，这些原则矛盾地表明，根据替代行为提供相同或相似的结果可能并不总是治疗行为障碍的最佳治疗选择。在当前的提案中，两项研究将扩展试点数据，展示行为经济学原理如何影响发育障碍个体的有序选择反应。随后的两个实验将采用这些相同的原理来确定在何种条件下，基于提供与历史上行为问题所产生的增强物功能不同的强化物的行为干预可能会比基于提供功能相似结果的干预措施具有更好的临床效果。