Direct Measurement and Prosthesis of Retarded Behavior

Children are not retarded. Only their behavior in average environments is sometimes retarded. In fact, it is modern science's ability to design suitable environments for these children that is retarded. We design environments to maintain life, but not to maintain dignified behavior. The purpose of this paper is to suggest techniques of designing prosthetic environments for maximizing the behavioral efficiency of exceptional children who show deficits when forced to behave in average environments. These suggestions evolved from the methods and discoveries of free-operant conditioning. In order to design a suitable environment for the behavior of a given individual, it is necessary to specify the individual's behavioral potential in the most precise, detailed terms possible. Direct measurement means automatically recording a time sample of behavior in a controlled and specified environment. With direct measurement, no problems of observer bias or test validity occur; everyone admits that the behavior of concern has been directly recorded. Questions still remain concerning the reliability of the recording, the adequacy of the sample duration, and interaction between the recording system and the behavior being sampled. However, these questions can be adequately answered by manipulating variables within the behavior laboratory and by the accuracy of prediction. Even behavioral processes which do not directly act upon some aspect of the environment or do not consist of a specified movement can be made available for relatively direct measurement. An easily recorded, arbitrary movement such as lever-pressing can be inserted between the individual and that aspect of the environment he is attending to. We call this "externalizing the be havior." It is useful if the externalizing response has minimal behavioral effects of its own (e.g., fatigue, satiation, intrinsic reinforcement). ——————— ) 1 Based on a lecture delivered to the Workshop for Leadership Personnel in Mental Retardation, Boston University, School of Education, March 11, 1963, and dedicated to Lois Goldstein. 2 Research was conducted in the Behavior Research Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, located at Metropolitan State Hospital, Waltham, Mass., and was supported by research grant MH-05054 from the Psychopharmacology Service Center, National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Public Health Service. 3 I am indebted to Beatrice H. Barrett, Ph.D., Burton Blatt, Ed.D., George Brabner, Ph.D., and Frank Garfunkel, Ed.D., for their helpful and constructive discussion of many of the concepts presented in this paper. Thanks are also due to Dr. Barrett for the use of her data on retarded and normal children and to Julie A. Rich for her data on autistic and normal children. The research, clerical, and editorial assistance of our laboratory staff and, most especially, the experimental behavior of our patients have been essential. 4 I have recently suggested prosthetic environments for the aged (Lindsley, 1964a). Many devices suitable for prosthetizing geriatric behavior will also be useful for certain types of retarded behavior.