Recent research has developed and evaluated assessments of sociability in which time allocation near or away from an adult who initiates social interactions is used to characterize the participant as social, indifferent, or avoidant of social interaction. Though these qualitative outcomes have been useful, no studies have evaluated methods of obtaining more quantitative measures of sociability. The matching law has been demonstrated to describe a wide range of human behavior and may also be useful in describing social time allocation. We adapted the matching law and assessment of sociability procedures with the aim of providing a more precise, quantitative measure of sociability. We fitted the matching equation to the social time allocation data of 8 children with autism spectrum disorder. The equation was effective in quantifying sociability, accounted for a large proportion of variance in participants' behavior, did so equally well for participants who were social and avoidant, and provided a more sensitive measure relative to those used in previous research. The implications of this methodology, its potential utility, and directions for future research are discussed.

中文翻译：

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匹配法则提供了自闭症儿童社交时间分配的定量描述

最近的研究已经开发和评估了社交能力的评估，其中使用接近或远离发起社交互动的成年人的时间分配来将参与者描述为社交、冷漠或回避社交互动。尽管这些定性结果是有用的，但没有研究评估获得更多社交性定量测量的方法。匹配法则已被证明可以描述广泛的人类行为，也可能有助于描述社会时间分配。我们调整了社交程序的匹配法则和评估，目的是提供更精确、定量的社交性测量。我们将匹配方程拟合到 8 名自闭症谱系障碍儿童的社交时间分配数据中。该方程在量化社交性方面是有效的，占参与者行为差异的很大一部分，对于社交和回避的参与者来说同样好，并且相对于先前研究中使用的那些提供了更敏感的衡量标准。讨论了该方法的含义、其潜在效用以及未来研究的方向。