Examining Contingency Control Deficits in Autism and MR

自闭症的特征是沟通和社交技能的缺陷，以及受限的、重复的和刻板的行为模式。科学家们从不同的理论角度试图理解、解释和修正这些缺陷。例如，神经心理学方法采用了各种各样的测试来检查这些损伤是如何由执行功能（EF）缺陷引起的。另一种方法是基于学习理论，运用操作性条件反射研究方法，试图证明自闭症的主要缺陷特征与判别控制（DC）问题有关。具体来说，这项工作的重点是识别和纠正与刺激过度选择性有关的问题，即倾向于对复杂刺激的某些特征做出反应，而排斥其他特征。这条研究路线已经被转化为行为教学策略，当作为一个强化的教育项目应用时，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外，EF和DC都代表了理解自闭症行为特征及其相关缺陷的基础图式。同样，EF和DC的缺陷（如刺激过度选择性）可能是与偶然性控制缺陷相关的更基本的心理过程的功能。在此，我们提出了一系列的实验来研究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、对持续偶然性的敏感性降低和行为变异的减少，并将采用传统的实验室操作方法。这些操作性学习任务的使用将允许对表现进行定量分析，精确识别缺陷，并分析这些缺陷作为自闭症功能的特异性，相对于没有自闭症和智力迟钝的对照组受试者。为了了解当前研究中检查的操作构念与EF缺陷之间的关系，将对操作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个体缺陷的措施（特别是威斯康星卡片分类任务和河内塔），在操作性任务上的表现差异可以在既定的参考框架中解释。本研究可用于建立未来的比较研究，以比较EF和操作性方法对自闭症个体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.