Atypical Effects of Reinforcement Procedures in ASD

描述（由申请人提供）：该探索性/开发项目解决了广泛观察到的自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）和智力残疾（ID）患者对行为治疗反应异质性的挑战。这种疗法设计的基础是假设基本行为过程（如强化和消退）的运作方式与疗法所源自的科学的一般原则一致。然而，来自对患有各种神经精神疾病的人（例如，注意缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）及其动物模型表明，在某些情况下，这种假设可能是有问题的，或者至少可能需要与习惯有所不同的解释。如果基础假设并非在所有情况下都成立，那么治疗结果可能会显示出令人不满意的变异性。拟议的项目是一个多学科的分析努力，从行为分析，心理生物学和认知神经科学的投入。在控制良好的条件下进行的研究中，我们将使用这些学科的组合方法来测试ASD和严重ID儿童的两个假设：（1）对有效分娩时间表的差异和变化做出反应的行为分配的测试结果将与需要辨别学习的程序的表现呈正相关，（2）某些心理生物学测量的结果将区分儿童在行为分配上对时间表差异/变化表现出高反应性和不表现出高反应性。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This exploratory/development project addresses the widely observed challenge of heterogeneity in the response of persons with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and intellectual disability (ID) to behavior therapy. Fundamental in the design of such therapy is the assumption that basic behavioral processes such as reinforcement and extinction operate in a manner that is consistent with the general principles of the science from which the therapy derives. However, converging evidence from studies of both humans with a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders (e.g., ADHD) and animal models thereof suggest that there may be cases and circumstances under which that assumption may be questionable or at least may require a somewhat different interpretation than is customary. If the underlying assumptions do not hold true in all cases, then outcomes of therapy may show unsatisfactory variability. The proposed project is a multidisciplinary analytic effort with inputs from behavior analysis, psychobiology, and cognitive neuroscience. In studies under well-controlled conditions, we will use combined methodology from those disciplines to test two hypotheses with children with ASD and severe ID: (1) Results of tests of behavioral allocation in response to disparities in and changes to schedules of effective reinforcer deliveries will correlate positivel with performance on procedures that require discrimination learning, and (2) Results of certain psychobiological measures will differentiate children who do and do not show high responsiveness in behavioral allocation to schedule disparities/changes.