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，重复和刻板的行为模式。科学家从各种理论角度试图理解，解释和修改这些缺陷。例如，神经心理学方法已经采用了各种测试来检查这些损伤如何由执行功能（EF）缺陷引起。另一种基于学习理论的方法，应用了操作性条件研究方法，试图表明自闭症的主要缺陷特征与辨别控制（DC）问题有关。具体来说，这项工作的重点是识别和补救有关的问题刺激过度选择性，倾向于对某些功能的复杂刺激，以排除其他。这一系列的研究已经转化为行为教学策略，当作为一个强化教育计划应用时，增加智力功能，减少自闭症行为。除了启发性价值和临床应用，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的心理过程的功能。我们在这里提出了一系列的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续性，对正在进行的突发事件的敏感性降低，以及行为变异减少，并将采用传统上在实验室中使用的操作方法。这些操作性学习任务的使用将允许定量分析的性能，精确识别的缺陷，并分析这些缺陷的特异性作为自闭症的功能，相对于对照组无自闭症和精神发育迟滞。在试图了解如何在目前的研究中正在检查的操作性结构与EF赤字，操作性任务的性能将与传统上用于检查EF赤字自闭症的神经心理学任务进行比较。此外，通过包括可靠地显示自闭症个体之间的缺陷的措施（特别是，威斯康星州卡片分类任务和河内塔），可以在一个既定的参考框架的背景下解释操作性任务的性能差异。建议的调查可以用来建立未来的比较研究，以对比EF和操作的方法表现出的个人自闭症的赤字。

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.