St Peter Claire C, Vollmer Timothy R, Bourret Jason C, Borrero Carrie S W, Sloman Kimberly N, Rapp John T
University of Florida, Gainesville 32611, USA.
J Appl Behav Anal. 2005 Winter;38(4):429-43. doi: 10.1901/jaba.2005.172-04.
Prior researchers have evaluated the efficacy of using the matching law to describe naturally occurring behavior-environment interactions. However, spurious matching could be obtained if the response and environmental event were correlated, even if the event did not reinforce the response. To assess the likelihood of obtaining spurious matching when relating attention and problem behavior, we evaluated the problem behavior of 3 participants for whom attention did not serve as a reinforcer for problem behavior in a functional analysis. Both the simple and generalized matching equations were used to examine matching relations extracted from descriptive observations that were conducted in the participants' classrooms. The results of aggregated matching analyses showed that the proportional rate of responding approximately matched the proportional rate of contiguous adult attention. Matching analyses conducted for all participants showed correlations between attention and problem behavior. These results demonstrate that spurious matching can be obtained, and they highlight the role of functional analyses in the analysis of naturally occurring matching relations.
先前的研究人员已经评估了使用匹配法则来描述自然发生的行为与环境相互作用的有效性。然而,如果反应与环境事件相关,即使该事件并未强化反应,也可能会得到虚假匹配。为了评估在关联注意力和问题行为时获得虚假匹配的可能性,我们对3名参与者的问题行为进行了评估,在功能分析中,注意力对他们的问题行为而言并非强化物。简单匹配方程和广义匹配方程都被用于检验从在参与者教室中进行的描述性观察中提取的匹配关系。汇总匹配分析的结果表明,反应的比例速率大致与成人相邻注意力的比例速率相匹配。对所有参与者进行的匹配分析表明,注意力与问题行为之间存在相关性。这些结果表明可能会获得虚假匹配,并且它们凸显了功能分析在自然发生的匹配关系分析中的作用。