Atypical Effects of Reinforcement Procedures in ASD

描述(由申请人提供)：这个探索性/发展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的异质性挑战。这种疗法设计的基础是假设基本的行为过程，如强化和消退，以一种与疗法产生的科学的一般原理一致的方式运作。然而，从对患有各种神经精神障碍(如ADHD)的人类及其动物模型的研究中收集的证据表明，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惯例略有不同的解释。如果基本假设并不在所有情况下都成立，那么治疗结果可能表现出不令人满意的可变性。拟议的项目是一项多学科的分析工作，输入来自行为分析、心理生物学和认知神经科学。在控制良好的条件下，我们将使用这些学科的组合方法在患有自闭症和严重ID的儿童中检验两个假说：(1)对有效补充剂提供的差异和时间表的反应的行为分配测试结果将与需要辨别性学习的程序的表现呈正相关；(2)某些心理生物学措施的结果将区分哪些儿童在行为分配方面表现出高反应性，哪些儿童对计划差异/变化表现出高反应性。

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.