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Behaviorism, Autism, and Procrastination
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Conceptual Behavior Analysis
Richard W. Malott
Science vs. Engineering
I think a big part of our problem is that we often try to be too “scientific.” Often we think we are doing basic research, when we are really doing behavioral engineering. Thus our over emphasis on research methods. Furthermore, our uncritical quest for scientific respectability (rather than conceptual purity) may explain why our frame of reference is often the superficial trappings of the Skinner box, rather than the fundamental principles that must underlie even the most fashionable of current basic-research topics. Because of a superficial understanding of the principles of behavior, we seek to reinforce work behavior on a fashionable intermittent schedule, when continuous reinforcement would be more effective. Or we strain to find a problem where we can apply fashionable Skinner-box, behavioral-momentum research rather than to find a procedure that will take care of a real behavior problem. We force laboratory procedures on the real world, rather than let the real world guide basic laboratory research. We feel so compelled to argue we are validating a principle of behavior, that we fall back on the ubiquitous law of effect to carry the burden of our scientific respectability; or we criticize our field for not finding other basic behavioral principles to study in OBM, when maybe that’s all there is, if that.
Why Care About Conceptual Analysis
UnderstandingI think the real goal of science is to tell us how the world works--how this causes that. Prediction and control are just superficially operational hand maidens of understanding. And understanding is more than a grab bag of empirical findings. It is a conceptual framework, within which we can interrelate the facts of our discipline, our empirically demonstrated functional relations. Understanding is our concepts and principles carefully applied to the classification and interrelating of our facts. Without careful, thoughtful conceptual analyses of our basic, applied, and engineering efforts, we can not have true understanding and thus we can not achieve the goal of the science of behavior analysis.
Applying
For those who do not consider understanding to be sufficiently bottom line, I also suggest that more careful, thoughtful, precise conceptual analyses would allow us to design more effective behavioral interventions in OBM and other applied areas. For example of beinf more effective is that we would provide feedback immediately before rather than after the response, if we were operating on the basis of a careful conceptual analysis.. Similarly, we would shun intermittent reinforcement for continuous reinforcement. And similarly, we should use deadlines, when trying to maintain or increase performance with analog contingencies; and thus we would use analogs to avoidance rather than analogs to reinforcement. (For the conceptual underpinnings and more detailed analyses of many of the common conceptual errors alluded to in this article, see the corresponding self-proclaimed “thoughtful” analyses in Malott, Whaley, and Malott, 1997.).
Conclusion: Scowl
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by lust for the straight semi-log transform, confusing the little dots falling on the straight line, with underlying process (if it’s straight as a gate, it’s straight, gate),
High-IQed hipsters seduced by Gerbrandsian Jezebels, the smoothness of FI scallops, one question leading to the next, one control demanding yet another, drilling ever deeper into the void of free-operant chaos, losing sight of the light at the start of the tunnel, just as their fathers before them had lost their insight in the blinding alleys of the t-maze and the nonsense of syllables, pseudo-sweet preparations for the study of the machine in the soul, lost with no trail of common-sense crumbs, lost with no trials of the discrete,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat contemplating the perfect semi-log fit of the King’s new clothes, suffering the little child to come unto them, the little child proclaiming, but the King shivereth, bare-butt naked,
who floating across everyday life, attempted to perfectly fit the new king-- autistic child, psychotic adult, procrastinating freshman, striking worker, compulsive gambler, deciding executive, the pure-science King dead, the white Carneaux no longer flying, Bird living only in Musac choruses of simplistic extrapolations from Skinner box to daily life, tunes you can dance to, but only if you don’t look at your feet,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes, hallucinating black Skinner boxes, forcing cool babe of conceptual analysis down drain with hypothetico-deductive bath water of mentalism, Blake-black-light tragedy,
who were expelled from the academies, the journals, the regional associations for crazy & publishing obscene single-organism odes on the windows of the skull, no variance to analyze in the war of scholars,
who bared their brains to Heaven, confusing the sanctity of science with the reality of market place, eager to please, eager to justify, confusing analog with homologue, confusing functional equivalent with fundamental equivalent, justifying S. box in terms of applications, applications in terms of S. box. Eve’s snake ignores the Big Apple to swallow it’s own tail in circular ecstasy.
(for the model, see Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, http://php.indiana.edu/~avigdor/poetry/ginsberg.html)
If there is anyone whom I have not offended, please let me know and I’ll add a couple more paragraphs.References
Malott, R. W., Whaley, D. L., & Malott, M. E. (1997). Elementary principles of behavior (third edition). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall
Normand, M., Buckland, B, & Austin, J. (1999). The Analysis of Behavioral Mechanisms in JOBM. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management.
(Pierce, W. D. & Epling, W. F.(1980). What happened to analysis in applied behavior analysis? The Behavior Analyst, 3, 1-9.
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