O controle pelos antecedentes e consequentes nas respostas verbais de pessoas com diagnóstico de esquizofrenia.

Abstract

This study intention was to experimentally investigate the control by antecedent events, such as control to respond to discriminative stimulus or by motivating operation, and also by consequent events on the verbal response from three people: two males and a female, diagnosed with schizophrenia, aged 26 and 53 years. It was applied functional assessment strategies through direct and indirect observation, as well as by functional analyses or function analyses methodology. The latter implicates in the environmental events manipulation, especially in four conditions: attention, control, escape demand and alone. These conditions were manipulated in the presence of motivating operation, identified based on context variables, and operation in the presence of positive and negative reinforcement (attention conditions and escape demand). Functional analyses data indicated that bizarre vocalizations were issued with high frequency conditions attention and escape demand; showing the control to respond to establishing or reinforcement operation. For the control condition it was possible to decrease the effect from changing the reinforced stimuli effectiveness from the establishing operation. However, bizarre vocalizations were not emitted as the reinforcement stimulus were offered regardless it occurred or not, as reinforcement operation was not used. When alone, the bizarre vocalizations were abolished, evidencing the control to respond to the presence of abolishing operation and without reinforcement operation. Based on this study information, the conclusion is that the control exercised by antecedent events explains the control exercised from consequent events. This is because in different antecedent conditions, the probability of bizarre vocalization changes, justifying the necessity to analyze with same relevance the control from antecedent and consequent events as response to experimental manipulation as in this context. The functional analysis was complementary to the functional assessment from direct observation, which data were not enough to elucidate controlled events to bizarre vocalization. In addition, it was complementary to the functional assessment by direct observation that, although with enough data to indicate manipulations, these are from an experimental strategy. For this reason it was justified the use of functional analysis methodology from empiric studies about the control from the antecedents from behavior, including bizarre vocalizations from people with schizophrenia.