Burke J C, Cerniglia L
Kennedy Institute, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21205.
J Autism Dev Disord. 1990 Jun;20(2):233-53. doi: 10.1007/BF02284721.
Interdisciplinary research suggests that autistic children's limitations in responding to environmental stimuli may be directly related to the number of components contained in the stimuli; as the number of components increases, such children hypothetically would exhibit greater difficulties in responding. The central purpose of this experiment was to assess whether such children indeed exhibit greater difficulties in responding as the number of components contained in an environmental stimulus was increased from one to four. If the children's responsivity was a function of stimulus complexity, a second focus of this experiment was to assess the feasibility of teaching them to respond to a complex environmental stimulus containing up to four components and to determine whether the effects of the intervention would generalize to other situations involving complex structured and social stimuli. Data gathered using a multiple baseline design across behaviors and children indicate that all of the children exhibited fewer correct responses to a stimulus as the number of stimulus components was increased from one to four. The results further showed that the training program used in this investigation was effective in producing some generalized increases in the children's responses to complex structured and social stimuli. Conceptualizing autistic children's responses to complex multicomponent stimuli as a pivotal target behavior that can be operationally defined may have important implications for understanding and altering the children's responsivity and development.
跨学科研究表明，自闭症儿童在对环境刺激做出反应方面的局限性可能与刺激中所含成分的数量直接相关；随着成分数量的增加，这类儿童在理论上做出反应时会表现出更大的困难。本实验的核心目的是评估当环境刺激中所含成分的数量从一个增加到四个时，这类儿童在做出反应方面是否确实会表现出更大的困难。如果儿童的反应能力是刺激复杂性的函数，那么本实验的第二个重点是评估教他们对包含多达四个成分的复杂环境刺激做出反应的可行性，并确定干预效果是否会推广到其他涉及复杂结构化和社会刺激的情况。使用跨行为和儿童的多基线设计收集的数据表明，随着刺激成分数量从一个增加到四个，所有儿童对刺激做出的正确反应都减少了。结果还表明，本研究中使用的训练计划有效地使儿童对复杂结构化和社会刺激的反应出现了一些普遍增加。将自闭症儿童对复杂多成分刺激的反应概念化为一种可以操作性定义的关键目标行为，可能对理解和改变儿童的反应能力及发展具有重要意义。
