Evaluation of resistance to change under different disrupter conditions in children with autism and severe intellectual disability

Translational research inspired by behavioral momentum theory in the area of developmental disabilities has shown effects in individuals over a range of functioning levels. In the current study, behavioral momentum was assessed in 6 children diagnosed with autism and severe intellectual disability. In a repeated measures design, participants were exposed to relatively rich versus lean reinforcement contingencies in a multiple schedule with food reinforcers. This was followed by exposure to each of four disrupting conditions: prefeeding, presentation of a concurrent alternative stimulus, presentation of a movie, and the presence of a researcher dispensing response-independent reinforcers on a variable-time schedule. Consistently greater resistance to disruption in the component with the richer schedule occurred with the alternative stimulus disrupter but not with the other disrupters. These results suggest parameters that may be more (or less) effective if behavioral momentum inspired techniques are to be exploited in therapeutic environments.

Cooperation and human cognition: the Vygotskian intelligence hypothesis

Nicholas Humphrey's social intelligence hypothesis proposed that the major engine of primate cognitive evolution was social competition. Lev Vygotsky also emphasized the social dimension of intelligence, but he focused on human primates and cultural things such as collaboration, communication and teaching. A reasonable proposal is that primate cognition in general was driven mainly by social competition, but beyond that the unique aspects of human cognition were driven by, or even constituted by, social cooperation. In the present paper, we provide evidence for this Vygotskian intelligence hypothesis by comparing the social-cognitive skills of great apes with those of young human children in several domains of activity involving cooperation and communication with others. We argue, finally, that regular participation in cooperative, cultural interactions during ontogeny leads children to construct uniquely powerful forms of perspectival cognitive representation.