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Behaviorism, Autism, and Procrastination
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Comments on the Dissemination of Behavioral Technology
Richard W. MalottAnalysis
Rule-Governed Behavior, or Id Control vs. Ego Control
As Shimamune (1996) points out, we should not confuse the indirect-acting rule-governed analog contingencies of complex, verbal, human “decision making” with the simple, direct-acting contingencies of the rat in the Skinner box. However, such direct-acting contingencies do form the basis of all human behavior. In other words, the outcomes of the adoption of a particular technology are almost always much too delayed to reinforce or punish such an adoption; so it is metaphorical, at best, to extrapolate from the few seconds delay ff reinforcement in matching-law research to the days, weeks, months, and years delay between the adoption of behavioral technology and the reinforcers that technology might eventually produce. But not only must we avoid over simplification that plagues much of behavior analysis, we behavior analysts must also be wary of the seductive attractiveness of the rationality implicit in cognitive psychology. In other words, just because a potential adopter tacts all sorts of characteristics of the technology, Freud may be right in that many of those tacts might be no more than decorative rationalization; and the variables really controlling the adopters behavior may be the smiles and frowns of the technology disseminator. I am not suggesting that human beings are incapable of rational decision, just that such rational decision may be more rare than we assume. Furthermore, most of the potential adopter’s statements or tacts describing the technology under consideration may be intraverbals devoid of contact with the actual technology itself. So our analyses must delicately balance the potential control by indirect-acting verbal rules and the direct-acting contingencies of social reinforcement and punishment – Freud’s constant battle between ego contingencies and id contingencies.Commitment vs. Adherence
In considering the diffusion of behavioral technology, we tend to make the error of concentrating on commitment and ignoring adherence. While this is a special problem for cognitivists, behaviorists also make this mistake. With a rational model of human behavior, the cognitivists usually overlook the crucial distinction of commitment vs. adherence. Thus they are constantly being surprised to find that rationally agreeing to a particular course of action often fails to result in following that course of action; agreeing to a diet and adhering to a diet are two different behaviors. Though fortunately for the Japanese readers, this example may be more relevant to the American culture than the Japanese culture. Generally we will adhere to our commitments, to the extent that each instance of such adherence results in a probable and sizeable outcome. But failing to follow a weight-reduction diet for just one dish of ice-cream will have an infinitesimally small impact on our waistline, though the repetition of such failures has a cumulatively significant effect on more than our waistline. Similarly, an individual instance of adherence to the implementation of most behavioral technologies results in only an infinitesimally small beneficial outcome. For example, a single instance of a grade-school teacher’s reinforcing a child’s appropriate behavior will have a negligible impact on that child’s behavior; but the consistent reinforcement of appropriate behavior can have the cumulative result of changing an academic failure into an academic success. But because of the poor control generated by rules describing small, though cumulatively significant outcomes, most school teachers fail to adhere to behavioral technology in their classroom though they may have left the college classroom firmly committed to that technology.Solutions
From the perspective of a goal-directed systems design, university teachers of behavior analysis can contribute greatly to the goal of increasing the impact of B.F. Skinner in the 21st century. There are several ways they might make such a contribution. Perhaps students can learn more about effective technology diffusion by studying the behavior of the used car salesperson and reading Dale Carnegie’s (1982) How to Win Friends and Influence People than we can by studying mathematical models of decision making. For example, after he retired from Columbia University, Fred Keller disseminated throughout Latin America his personalized systems of instruction, a behavioral-inspired instructional technology; in the process he also disseminated behavior analysis in general throughout the contingent. In my view, his secret is that he was so lovable that everyone wanted him for a grandfather; and he had an effective way of nodding his head in profound , thoughtful agreement as you speak; who could resist offending such a wonderful person by failing to adopt the technology that person advocated. Similarly, after he retired from the University of Illinois, Sidney Bijou has effectively dedicated much of his time to the international dissemination of behavior analysis, simply by concentrating on it, going where ever he is invited, and being supportive. University teachers can accomplish the sub-goal of facilitating the dissemination of behavior-analytic technology through the accomplishment of a lower-level sub-goal – ensuring that well-trained behavior analysts are in positions to make widespread use of behavior analysis. They contribute to that sub-goal, in turn, by producing a large number of well-trained behavior analysts. But the data on retention in ABA suggests that merely producing a large number of behavior analysis alumni is not sufficient. We must spend as much of our effort supporting their continued use of behavior analysis, once our students graduate. Teachers of behavior analysis might also encourage on alternative to the traditional model of behavior analyst as consultant. The behavior analysis consultant attempts to persuade directors and managers of human service, educational, and business organizations to adopt and maintain behavioral technology, often a difficult or impossible goal. An alternative is for behavior analysts to become directors and managers in such organizations, divisions, departments, wards, etc. Then they themselves can adopt and maintain the behavioral technology they haven been trained to use. Although the behavior-analyst-as-manager model may decrease the problems of technology dissemination, it does not eliminate them. And the problem still remains of ensuring that our alumni end up in such managerial approaches. In dealing with adherence, once commitment is obtained, it is almost always essential to establish an effective performance-management system – one that will maintain adherence to an accepted behavioral technology. Behavior analysts are almost as likely to maintain adherence as are cognitivists.
Behavioralizing the Culture
Some have argued we should disseminate behavioral technology by behavioralizing the culture. An example would be formally teaching behavior analysis at the preschool through high school level, as well as at the university level, as a part of the student’s liberal education in the natural and social sciences. Along the same line, behavior analysts periodically suggest that we should infiltrate the popular media such as movies, TV shows, and newspaper columns with behavior analytic themes. While all these efforts to behavioralize the culture might be of value, their impact may be too diffuse and their implementation too expensive to be cost effective. For example, my observation is that without an effective maintenance system, an entire course in behavior analysis, no matter how effective and well received by the student, will have little lasting effect on the student, if the student does not end up in an environment that explicitly supports the use of behavior analysis. (This is just another example of the commitment vs. adherence dichotomy.) Of course, if teaching behavior analysis in high school were followed by an effective channeling of the students into a behavior-analytic university program, the cost effectiveness of the high-school course would greatly increase.
Perhaps we can be more successful by addressing specific technological issues for specific audiences, rather than trying to behavioralize the culture. I find little resistance to behavior analysis as a technology in my undergraduate principles of behavior course and little need to behavioralize my student to prepare them for such an acceptance of the behavioral technology. But I find much more resistance to behavior analysis as a world view in a follow up course; for example, few students are able to accept the implications of behavior analysis for freewill, awareness, religion, intelligence, or sexual values.Research and Development
Shimamune (1996) suggests that research and development in the area of technology dissemination may be too long range to produce an adequate frequency of publication to ensure the academic survival of the researcher (see Hopkins, 1987, for a similar view of constraints on long-term research). I think the secret may be to publish in professional journals signs of accomplishment as the project progresses toward its long-range goals. If scholars are sufficiently research and publication oriented, they can both develop a long-range technology and publish along the way, though it is not easy. An example would be the researchers who developed the Achievement Place model (Fixsen & Blase, 1993); they have generated many publications as well as disseminated their technology. Furthermore, small scale efforts at dissemination research might not be excessively long. For example we academicians might do research on dissemination of our behavioral technology to our undergraduate students to use in their every day lives, technology like self-management techniques, performance contracting, and effective study techniques. From the individual level of dissemination, we might go to a small-scale organizational level, such as student organizations within the university. Similarly, many of our students especially our graduate students work in organizational settings, whether clinical, educational, or business. These students might attempt small dissemination projects in their own settings. And, of course, the university, itself, is an organization notoriously resistant to innovation, especially of a behavioral nature, an organization that would provide a stringent test site of any of our theories and techniques related to the dissemination of technology, theory, philosophy, or even of fact. Most of us who teach behavior analysis to undergraduates work daily in a natural laboratory begging for a systematic effort at the diffusion of technology, science, and philosophy. Rather than blaming the student (the victim) for failing to appreciate the technological, philosophical, intellectual, and spiritual power of behavior analysis, we should systematically analyze the variables controlling our student’s commitment and adherence to behavior analysis in all of its many ramifications. Then we might gradually expand from our classroom. First we could move to other classrooms and organizations within the university, to those organizations outside the university our students have ready access to; and as we acquire an increasingly effective technology of dissemination, we can expand our efforts to include organizations and populations of greater and greater impact on our culture in general. All easier said than done, but I have accomplished nothing worthwhile in my life that I would have been willing to undertake had I appreciated, at the beginning, how difficult it would be ultimately. So it is best that we not be too honest about the anticipated difficulties of undertaking any new project; could that mild deception be the first step in the dissemination of behavioral technology? More generally, we might develop the dissemination technology that Shimamune (1996) advocates by performing a number of case studies. In those case studies, we could follow the process he recommends and document our successes and failures, modifying his recommendations as we do so. Then we should provide our graduate students with practicum training in implementing technology diffusion on a small scale, in an individual institution, department, or classroom, or ward within that institution. These small scale replications might even be a good place to start in the empirical research and development of Shimamune dissemination technology. Perhaps university teachers could add dissemination to the requirements of acceptable dissertations and articles. This addition might seem like an unnecessary cruelty, but perhaps the initial scope of applied behavior analysis dissertations might be decreased to make dissemination more manageable within a reasonable time frame. Then it would not suffice merely to demonstrate that a particular example of behavioral technology works; it would also be necessary to demonstrate that the technology works in the hands of the end user, that the end user is likely to adopt it, and that the end user is likely to continue using it (a relevant variable would probably be ease of use by the novice and the expert). Such requirements placed in the already strict requirements for publication in behavior analysis journals might also facilitate dissemination. Alternatively, these journals might actively encourage the follow up publication of usability and dissemination data as a means of encouraging such research and development efforts.
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