Koegel R L, Dyer K, Bell L K
Speech and Hearing Sciences Department, University of California, Santa Barbara 93106.
J Appl Behav Anal. 1987 Fall;20(3):243-52. doi: 10.1901/jaba.1987.20-243.
One of the characteristics of autistic children is severe social avoidance behavior. We assessed whether the type of activity (child-preferred vs. activities that were arbitrarily determined by an adult) engaged in during an interaction was correlated with the amount of social avoidance behaviors these children exhibit. Results revealed a negative correlation between appropriate child-preferred activities and social avoidance behavior. Additional analyses revealed that (a) social avoidance behaviors could be manipulated within a reversal design, and would predictably decrease when the children were prompted to initiate appropriate child-preferred activities; and (b) these procedures could be used to teach children to initiate child-preferred activities in community settings, resulting in reductions in social avoidance responses even after the therapist's prompts were completely removed. These data suggest that the manipulation of task variables may influence the severe social unresponsiveness that is characteristic of autistic children.
自闭症儿童的特征之一是严重的社交回避行为。我们评估了互动过程中所从事的活动类型（儿童偏好的活动与成人任意确定的活动）是否与这些儿童表现出的社交回避行为的数量相关。结果显示，适当的儿童偏好活动与社交回避行为之间存在负相关。进一步的分析表明：（a）社交回避行为可以在反转设计中得到控制，当提示儿童发起适当的儿童偏好活动时，社交回避行为可预测地减少；（b）这些程序可用于教导儿童在社区环境中发起儿童偏好的活动，即使在治疗师的提示完全消除后，社交回避反应也会减少。这些数据表明，任务变量的操控可能会影响自闭症儿童所特有的严重社交无反应性。
