Examining Contingency Control Deficits in Autism and MR

自闭症的特征是缺乏沟通和社交技能，以及受限、重复和刻板的行为模式。来自不同理论视角的科学家试图理解、解释和修改这些缺陷。例如，神经心理学方法采用了各种测试来检查这些损害是如何由执行功能(EF)缺陷造成的。另一种基于学习理论的方法，应用操作条件化研究方法，试图表明自闭症的主要缺陷特征与辨别性控制(DC)问题有关。具体地说，这项工作的重点是识别和补救与刺激过度选择有关的问题，即对复杂刺激的某些特征做出反应而排除其他刺激的倾向。这一系列研究已经被转化为行为教学策略，当作为强化教育计划应用时，可以提高智力功能，减少自闭症行为。除了启发式价值和临床应用，EF和DC都代表了理解自闭症及其相关缺陷的行为特征的基础的图式。同样，EF和DC的缺陷(例如，刺激过度选择性)可能是与应急控制缺陷相关的更基本心理过程的功能。我们在这里提出了一系列实验来调查自闭症的行为缺陷在多大程度上反映了过度的行为持久性，对正在进行的意外事件的敏感度降低，以及行为变异减少，并将使用实验室传统使用的可操作性方法。这些操作性学习任务的使用将允许对表现进行量化分析，准确识别缺陷，并分析这些缺陷作为自闭症的功能的特殊性，相对于非自闭症和智力落后的对照受试者。为了了解目前研究中正在研究的操作子结构如何与EF缺陷相关，我们将把操作性任务的表现与传统上用于检查自闭症EF缺陷的神经心理学任务进行比较。此外，通过纳入可靠地显示自闭症患者缺陷的措施(具体地说，威斯康星卡片分类任务和河内塔)，可以在已建立的参照系的背景下解释可操作任务的绩效差异。这项拟议的调查可用于建立未来的比较研究，以对比EF和OPERATE方法对自闭症患者表现出的表现缺陷的影响。

Autism has been characterized by deficits in communication and social skills, and restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped behavior patterns. Scientists from a variety of theoretical perspectives have sought to understand, explain and modify these deficits. For example, neuropsychological approaches have employed a variety of tests to examine how these impairments result from Executive Functioning (EF) deficits. Another approach, based on learning theory, has applied operant eonditioning research methods in an attempt to show that the primary deficits characteristic of autism are related to problems with Discriminative Control (DC). Specifically, this work has focused on the identification and remediation of problems related to stimulus overselectivity, the tendency to respond to certain features of complex stimuli to the exclusion of others. This line of research has been translated into behavioral teaching strategies, that when applied as an intensive educational program, increase intellectual functioning and decrease autistic behavior. Aside from heuristic value and clinical application, both EF and DC represent schema for understanding the basis of the behavioral features of autism and their associated deficits. Similarly, deficits in EF and DC (e.g., stimulus overselectivity) may be functions of more fundamental psychological processes related to deficits in contingency control. We propose here a series of experiments to investigate the extent to which the behavioral deficits of autism reflect excessive behavioral persistence, decreased sensitivity to ongoing contingencies, and decreased behavioral variation, and will employ operant methods used traditionally in the laboratory. The use of these operant learning tasks will permit the quantitative analysis of performances, precise identification of deficits, and analysis of the specificity of these deficits as a function of autism, relative to control subjects without autism and with mental retardation. In an attempt to understand how the operant constructs being examined in the current study are related to EF deficits, performance on operant tasks will be compared with neuropsychological tasks traditionally used to examine EF deficits in autism. Moreover, by including measures that reliably show deficits among individuals with autism (specifically, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task and the Tower of Hanoi), performance differences on the operant tasks can be interpreted in the context of an established frame of reference. The proposed investigation can be used to set up future comparative research to contrast EF and operant approaches to the performance deficits displayed by individuals with autism.