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行为问题通常由其功能结果（或强化物）维持。为了例如，儿童可能会通过他们的问题获得看护者的关注或逃避教学要求行为。建立在这个框架之上的行为干预包括当前的心理学标准关心。这些干预措施通常涉及教学或以其他方式促进适当的、替代性的产生与问题行为相同或相似的强化物的行为，从而消除了需要以免孩子做出异常行为。大量研究验证了其有效性这些干预措施是在初始条件下进行的，但其他人发现它们的治疗效果有时随着对强化物的反应比例增加（或“变薄”）以进行干预，其减少在自然环境（例如教室）中实用。行为经济学领域的原理可以帮助确定行为干预可以维持其效果的条件强化交付计划变化的影响。具体而言，行为经济学概念可替代性和需求弹性揭示了对商品的需求（用行为术语来说，选择一种强化物而不是同时可用的强化物）是其成本（强化物的数量）的联合函数产生强化物所需的反应）以及同时可用商品的程度更具有可替代性。这些发现对行为干预的影响是这个问题当可用的替代方案出现时，随着时间表的稀疏化，行为可能更有可能重新出现功能相似。因此，这些原则自相矛盾地表明，提供相同或取决于替代行为的类似结果可能并不总是最好的治疗选择治疗行为障碍。在当前的提案中，两项研究将扩展试点数据，展示如何行为经济学原理可以影响个体的有序选择反应发育障碍。随后的两个实验将采用这些相同的原理来确定行为干预基于提供功能不同的强化物的条件与那些历史上由行为问题产生的问题相比，预计具有更好的临床效果基于提供功能相似的结果的干预措施。