Rincover A
J Abnorm Child Psychol. 1978 Sep;6(3):299-310. doi: 10.1007/BF00924733.
This study was designed to investigate the role of sensory reinforcement in the motivation of self-stimulation. If self-stimulatory behavior is maintained by its sensory consequences, such as the proprioceptive, auditory, or visual stimulation it produces, then such behavior should extinguish when those sensory consequences are not permitted. The present study introduces a new procedure, Sensory Extinction, in which certain sensory consequences are masked or removed, to examine whether self-stimulation is operant behavior maintained by sensory reinforcement. The effectiveness of Sensory Extinction was assessed by a reversal design for each of three autistic children, and the results showed the following. First, self-stimulation reliably extinguished when a certain sensory consequence was removed, then increased when that consequence was permitted. This was replicable within and across children. Second, different Sensory Extinction procedures were required for different self-stimulatory behaviors, since the sensory reinforcers supporting them were idiosyncratic across children. Finally, regarding clinical gains, the data suggest that Sensory Extinction may be a relatively convenient and rapid alternative for the treatment of self-stimulation. The present findings extend the efficacy of extinction as a behavior-modification technique to instances in which the reinforcer is purely sensory. The implications of these results for the treatment of other forms of deviant behavior are discussed.
本研究旨在探讨感觉强化在自我刺激动机中的作用。如果自我刺激行为是由其感觉后果维持的，比如它所产生的本体感觉、听觉或视觉刺激，那么当这些感觉后果不被允许时，这种行为就应该消退。本研究引入了一种新程序，即感觉消退，其中某些感觉后果被掩盖或消除，以检验自我刺激是否是由感觉强化维持的操作性行为。通过对三名自闭症儿童分别采用反转设计来评估感觉消退的有效性，结果如下。首先，当某种感觉后果被消除时，自我刺激可靠地消退，而当该后果被允许时，自我刺激又会增加。这在儿童个体内部和不同儿童之间都是可重复的。其次，不同的自我刺激行为需要不同的感觉消退程序，因为支持它们的感觉强化物在不同儿童中是因人而异的。最后，关于临床效果，数据表明感觉消退可能是治疗自我刺激的一种相对方便快捷的替代方法。本研究结果将消退作为一种行为矫正技术的功效扩展到了强化物纯粹是感觉性的情况。文中还讨论了这些结果对治疗其他形式异常行为的意义。
