History of Behavior Analysis (5)

1. History of Behavior Analysis (5) Christine L. Whitley

2. Is it “logical” to study the past? ? • We can learn from the “History of Behavior Analysis” • History • To be “part of”, to be initiated • Learning from past successes and past failure • Shaping our behavior on models and mentors: Skinner • Behavior • Observable, measurable, described • Analysis • Method, research, theory, model • Behavior Analysis • Approach, field, tools, applied science • An important step in acquiring tangible tools, applicable processes, and to back up any further activity in B.A. Conclusion

3. Textbook • 1. Introduction • 2. B.F. Skinner – The man • 3. Skinner’s Intellectual Background • 4. Skinner’s Philosophy of a Science of Human Behavior – Radical Behaviorism • 5. Operant Conditioning and the Experimental Analysis of Behavior • 6. Skinner on Cognition • 7. Skinner on Language • 8. Applied Behavior Analysis • 9. B.F. Skinner: Expert Self-Manager • 10. Skinner’s Views on Bettering Society • 11. Criticism of Skinner • 12. Skinner’s Legacy • 13. B.F. Skinner’s Published Works

4. Chapter 4: Radical Behaviorism • Radical Behaviorism: Radicus, Latin for root. Skinner thought that his behaviorism was a thoroughgoing, “deep” behaviorism. “ Behaviorism in not the science of human behavior; it is the philosophy of that science.

5. Two types of behavior • Overt behavior: capable of being observed by two people • Covert behavior: occurs “within the skin” • Cognition do not explain overt behavior but rather are more behavior to be explained.

6. Read this cartoon... Do you agree with the little boy's explanation? What are the facts, the cause and the consequence? Correlation does not imply causation! Are the facts related to each other? Or do they just occur simultaneously? Or which one would be the cause of the second one? What if there was a third factor?

7. Pavlov (1849-1938) Иван Петрович Павлов (his name in Russian) Want to see more of Pavlov in Russia? http://www.infran.ru/index_eng.htm Want to know more about his life? http://www.ivanpavlov.com/

8. Darwin • Charles Robert Darwin (12 February1809 – 19 April1882) was an Englishnaturalist who achieved lasting fame by producing considerable evidence that species originated through evolutionary change, at the same time proposing the scientific theory that natural selection is the mechanism by which such change occurs. This theory is now considered a cornerstone of biology.

9. p.66 Skinner’s Philosophy of Psychology: • 1. Psychology is a branch of biological science. Skinner (1963) asserted that psychology is “part of biology, a natural science for which tested and highly successful methods are available” (p.956) • Skinner calls the science based on this philosophy the experimental analysis of behavior or behavior analysis” (p.56)

10. p.66 Skinner’s Philosophy of Psychology: • 2. The goals of science are prediction and control. • Discovering causes is important, because it allows us to predict and control phenomena (p.59) • (…) our lack of knowledge of causes does not imply, much less prove, that our behavior is not caused. (p.60) • Science is based on the view that given certain initial conditions, a predictable situation will follow. (p.60)

11. p.66 Skinner’s Philosophy of Psychology: • 3. According to Skinner (1972), the proper subject matter of psychology is behavior, that is , what the organism does. Skinner stated that “behavior is not simply the result of more fundamental activities, to which our research must therefore be addressed, but an end it itself” (p.376) • Although for Skinner all behavior is determined, he thought that operant behavior encompasses what most people term voluntary behavior. Skinner (1986) stated that “operant behavior is the filed of intention, purpose and expectation” (p.716)

12. p.66 Skinner’s Philosophy of Psychology: • 4. All behavior is determined; that is, all behavior is caused. There is no such thing as free will. • The view that behavior is determined is a necessary view for making it reasonable to study behavior scientifically. Therefore, another fundamental belief of radical behaviorism is that all behavior is determined. (p.60)

13. p.66 Skinner’s Philosophy of Psychology: • 5. The behavior of all animals, including humans, is the result of evolution (natural selection, of what Skinner terms the contingencies of survival) and of learning that occurs in the animal’s lifetime (or what Skinner calls the contingencies of reinforcement). • Skinner called the mechanisms by which the organism learns through its interaction with the environment contingencies of reinforcement. (A contingency is a dependency or an “if-then” relationship.) Skinner called evolutionary influences the contingencies of survival.

14. p.66 Skinner’s Philosophy of Psychology: • 6. Behavior should be studied by manipulating environmental variables that precede and follow behavior to attempt to identify functional relationships between these environmental variables and behavior. • Experimental analysis of behavior involves manipulating variable (independent variable) while holding all other variables constant. This allows the experimenter to see if the independent variable is a cause for he observed changes in the dependent variable. There is a functional relationship (independent of the x-axis and dependent on the y-axis) (p.59)

15. p.66 Skinner’s Philosophy of Psychology: • 7. Cognitions are behavior; more specifically, they are covert behavior (i.e., behavior that cannot be seen by others). Cognitions have a legitimate status in a science of behavior. However, they are more behavior to be explained, rather than behavior that explains other behaviors. • Skinner, like many cognitive psychologists, argued that there is not a special mental world with special properties. If we want to predict what a person will do, how can we discover the mental causes of his behavior, and how can we produce the feelings and states of mind which induce him to behave in a given way? (p.61)

16. p.66 Skinner’s Philosophy of Psychology: • 8. The rate at which an organism behaves is often the most useful dependent variable. • Science uncovers systematic regularities. That is, uncovers statements like the following: if situation x occurs (say an object is in free fall near the earth’s surgace, or a person with strep throat is given an antibiotic), then either y must occur (the object will accelearte at 9.8 m/s2) or the probabilities will systematically change (the strep will likely die soon).

17. p.66 Skinner’s Philosophy of Psychology: • 9. Scientists should identify general laws of conditioning by studying simple responses under controlled circumstances. • For example, the number of cookies eaten can be the dependent variable, and the amount of sugar in them can be the independent variable. That is, we can manipulate the amount of sugar in the cookies and see if this variable causes more or fewer cookies to be eaten.

18. p.66 Skinner’s Philosophy of Psychology: • 10. Scientists will be most effective if they proceed inductively and avoid hypothesis testing. • A proposition is true to the extent that with its help the listener responds effectively to the situation it describes. (p.64) • Behaviorism is a formulation which makes possible an effective experimental approach to human behavior. It is a working hypothesis about the nature of a subject matter. (p.56)

19. p.66 Skinner’s Philosophy of Psychology: • 11. Scientist should analyze the behavior of individual subjects and avoid the averaging of data and the use of statistics. • science is a corpus of rules for effective action (p.64)

20. p.66 Skinner’s Philosophy of Psychology: • 12. Scientists will be most effective if they focus on accessible, manipulable variables. • To say that an organism has learned is to say that the organism has gained knowledge. Knowledge becomes effective behavior that is shaped through the contingencies of survival and reinforcement. (p.63)

21. p.66 Skinner’s Philosophy of Psychology: • 13. Scientists ought to pay close attention to observables and avoid loosely defined theoretical constructs and metaphors. This is part of Skinner’s insistence on Mach’s dictum of using the most economical description of the facts. • Ernst Mach (February 18, 1838 – February 19, 1916) was an Austrian-Czechphysicist and philosopher and is the namesake for the "Mach number" (aka Mach speed) and the optical illusion known as Mach bands. • Science should be practical and scientist must” clear up ideas, expose the real significance of the matter, and get rid of metaphysical obscurities” • Science should provide concise, economical descriptions of phenomena. • Functional relationship (read p.37)

22. p.66 Skinner’s Philosophy of Psychology: • 14. Scientists should reject inner causes and explanations, particularly mentalistic ones, and should instead look to the environment for the cause of the behavior. • (Skinner) viewed knowing as a natural phenomenon (literally, a part of nature) that can be studied and accounted for in the same ways as other natural phenomena. (p.63)

23. p.66 Skinner’s Philosophy of Psychology: • 15. Scientists should translate and, when necessary, revise mentalistic statements and everyday explanations into behavior statements. Speaking of nonbehavioral statements, Skinner stated that some can be “translated into behavior,” whereas others can be discarded as unnecessary or meaningless. • Radical behaviorism’s environmentalism does not imply that the organism passively reacts to the environment. The relationship between the organism and the environment is interdependent and reciprocal (Bijou, 1993)

24. p.66 Skinner’s Philosophy of Psychology: • 16. Scientists ought to regard private events as physical and lawful and ought to treat subjective states and events as collateral byproducts of other behavior. • He wanted an analysis of the scientists’ verbal behavior to discover environmental variables that govern its emission and effectiveness. (p.70)