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| Dementia Patients |
| Tuesday, June 1, 2010 |
| 9:00 AM–9:50 AM |
| Travis A/B (Grand Hyatt) |
| Area: DEV |
| Chair: Javier Virues-Ortega (CIBERNED, Carlos III Institute of Health) |
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| The Reinforcing Effect of Edible, Leisure, and Social Stimuli in Patients With Dementia |
| Domain: Applied Behavior Analysis |
| CELIA NOGALES-GONZALEZ (Association for Behavior Analysis Spain), Javier Virues-Ortega (CIBERNED, Carlos III Institute of Health) |
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| Abstract: Alzheimer’s dementia is a neurodegenerative disease that involves a number of behavioral features that have not yet been studied. A basic step into that aim is to study how reinforcement works in this population. The present study explores systematically through a series of four experiments the following aspects of reinforcement in dementia: (a) forms of stimuli that are more frequently preferred by dementia patients, (b) dependence between preference and reinforcement among dementia patients, and (c) reinforcing effect of preferred stimuli in already acquired tasks and newly acquired tasks. In Experiment 1 an adapted version of the Fisher pair-wise preference protocol in 15 participants using edible and leisure stimuli. In Experiment 2 four participants were reinforced contingently upon engagement in tasks already in the individuals’ repertoire. Highly preferred items as identified in Experiment 1 were used as reinforcers. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 2 with newly acquired tasks. Experiment 4 finally, replicated results in Experiments 2 and 3 controlling for the effect of social stimuli which was combined with leisure and edible items in Experiments 2 and 3. The present study may help establish the basis for the applied use of reinforcement in dementia patients. |
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