Condicionamento de elogios como reforçadores sociais para crianças diagnosticadas com Transtorno do Espectro do Autismo: uma revisão bibliográfica

Abstract

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction in multiple contexts and by the presence of restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior, interests or activities. Differences in social learning pattern and sensitivity to social stimuli of typical children and children with ASD are frequently identified. Neurosciences present evidence on typical and atypical learning patterns in early life; the Biobehavioral Approach develops interlocutions between physiological data and investigations about the behavioral processes investigated by Behavior Analysis. Procedures to increase the interest of children with ASD in social stimuli, such as procedures involving stimulus-stimulus pairing (S-S) and discriminative control (PCD) have been developed. Considering the high incidence of ASD and the need to corroborate data that assess the efficiency of praise conditioning procedures as reinforcers, this theoretical study aimed to: (1) bring together evidence from investigations at different levels of analysis relevant to the phenomenon of social learning and (2) carry out a literature review about the SS and PCD pairing procedures to establish a role that reinforces praise for children with ASD. It was considered that the interlocution between the evidence provided by the aforementioned areas of knowledge would favor the control of variables such as interval between sessions, age of participants and characteristics of social stimuli in compliment conditioning studies.