A Behavioral-Economic Approach To Maximizing Environmental Feedback
William Dube

Funded by NICHD, P01 HD046666 Project 2
Co-Investigator: Dr. William H. Ahearn, New England Center for Children

This project investigates a behavioral economics approach to motivation for persons with intellectual disabilities. In behavioral economics, reinforcers are treated as commodities, and the environmental contingencies that govern access to those commodities as the price. To conduct the analysis, we first determine individual demand functions for specific commodities. Demand functions relate consumption rate to price; they can be obtained by a parametric assessment of consumption over a range of prices. The demand function provides a more comprehensive picture of performance dynamics than the point estimate produced by traditional/current methods of evaluating reinforcer preference and effectiveness. We will characterize variables that affect demand functions and the subsequent effects on dependent measures that include both acquisition and performance. The project also includes research to examine the economic dynamics of token exchange systems, or “token economies” by studying the effects of schedule manipulations for earning and exchanging tokens on a number of behavioral outcomes. A series of applied intervention studies will demonstrate the application of the research to clinical and educational problems in the special-education classroom.
This project focuses specifically on motivational difficulties in individuals with developmental disabilities. We expect the results of our studies to define a technology for obtaining individualized economic profiles that will be useful in designing more effective motivational systems for persons with intellectual disabilities, and to support a technology for “tuning” such systems to accommodate individual differences.