Assumptions and Basic Connections

"... I can scarcely avoid some discussion of the all but universal belief that a science of behavior must be neurological in nature."  Skinner wrote this i 1938, more than 70 years ago.
But most people still assume one must look into persons to find out why they behave - especially
when they behave badly. Well-behaved persons seem not to interest anyone, not even researchers.
Normalcy is taken for granted.

Yet were scientists to identify variables that keep subjects healthy and normally mobile in the lab, they would know - by analogy - what harms and drives persons mad beyond the experimental settings.
As physicians connect good health and normal organic functioning, so might applied behavior analysts connect good social behavior with normal external surroundings.
Scientific psychology - behavior analysis - would then contribute knowledge as to normal rates and response frequency under certain conditions.
Sources of abnormal behavior are already diagnosed as due to dysfunctional social relationships:
too much of one thing and not enough of another ... and so forth ...

Make no mistake! Healthy persons can't help but to see and to hear.
Seeing and hearing are reflexive, though of course persons, like other creatures, are susceptible
to reflex conditioning.
We know food in the mouth makes us salivate but salivating to something we see or hear outside
is - so to speak - a different kettle of fish. We learn to perceive stimuli, routine sights and sounds,
and what they imply for our welfare.

From the beginning ... starting with Pavlov's Conditioned Reflexes ... scientists consistently
demonstrate how individuals AND physiology are naturally affected by their environments.
Pavlov measured saliva, he connected visible and audible stimuli with edible reinforcement.
Skinner measured voluntary action as a function of stimuli with reinforcing consequences.
Neither process could have occurred without affecting the brain cells and neuromuscular systems.

Behavior analysis has revealed the principles of conditioning as 'Laws of Nature':
organisms depend on environmental qualities for their life and social relationships.
And, of course, this has to include human mortals, flesh-and-blood human beings.

" Neurology cannot prove these laws wrong if they are valid at the level of behavior.
Not only are laws of behavior independent of neurological support, they actually impose
certain limiting conditions upon any science which undertakes to study the internal economy of the organism." Thus Skinner, in chapter 12 of his book, The Behavior of Organisms.

This is as exciting today, as on first reading.  B.F. Skinner and Charles Darwin fit together.
Were conditioning taken into account, the evolution of species might be better understood:
Prior suppositions would change as more and more basic connections become clarified.     
June 27, 2012

WHY I AM A RADICAL BEHAVIORIST: page 1

Introduction (1)
The special 1984 Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior ‎was my professional eye-opener. In an editorial Present Trends and Directions for the Future Lattal & Harzem wrote:
‘the science of behavior is important not only for its own sake, but for the sake of its implications for social survival’ – today, a timely reminder.

Then - 26 years ago - scientists were discussing problems in animal laboratories that were quite new to me and in particular, Philip Hineline’s question:
AVERSIVE CONTROL: A SEPARATE DOMAIN? ‎

Surprised and intrigued, I envisioned a rat retreat from a lever if shocked, charted a series of hypothetical cumulative curves for the animal ... and was afforded a view of biological ‘taxis’,
a whole organism in motion. As a result, I saw novel effects of aversive and reinforcing stimuli: even from a distance, the former repel and the latter attract. Ever since then, I see direction of movement as a basic distinction between evasion/avoidance versus approach.

What those records reflect was so extraordinary, I feel obliged to try and convince operant conditioners that studying mobilization will provide a breakthrough in biology, psychology and - primarily - behavior analysis. Global attention to “What moves people? ” should ensue.
An advantage would be normalization in the laboratory and evaluation of similar conditions elsewhere.
I think ecological conservationists will wish to collaborate with behaviorists in a search for the consequences and discriminative stimuli which keep all the experimental subjects fit and intact, do not harm or confuse, and guide them onto paths with a workable chance for survival.

Though this paper relates to my story, I believe all persons who dream of a more humane world will resonate to its message. I cite eminent scientists who gave me hope and enlightenment. Their words may impress readers and motivate operant conditioners to revive cumulative recording with able-bodied animals, in enlarged settings. I submit, expanded research will help to resolve questions concerning Man’s place in nature.

__________________________
(1)I resume my train of thoughts on:/mobility/,/standstill/,/normalisation/,/animal research/, /the whole organism/, audio-visual stimuli/, /environmntal control /In my view, these are currently the themes of major importance for further developments in behavior analysis, basic as much as applied.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

She lost her way, wasn't going anywhere, she's not a young chicken any more. Such is life.
By the time you know your way around, you're not heading anywhere.
Pessimist

The subconscious took over; this chicken doesn't know why she had to cross the road; her ego is weaker than her id and her superego.
Psychoanalyst

Chickens can't think, they don't apply their mind to road-crossing, they have a small brain. This chicken also has neurological difficulty.
Cognitivist

She is a violent, unstable and anti-social chicken. Good citizens pushed her across the border.
Stickler for Discipline

For years she was lonely, depressed. Then someone friendly waved to her from the other side of the road and, before you could say 'Jack Robinson' she was there. Furthermore, she has no intention of returning, she took her belongings; she left for good, I wish her the best.
Optimist

I was watching the road with my binoculars and saw what happened. A rooster came first, then the chicken - followed by 8 chicks! I have my religious moments, this was one of them.
Naturalist

This chicken was probably deprived of grain and had lost weight so she approached the food on the other side of the road. My colleagues and I recorded pigeons working for grain in the laboratory; this behavior is a typical result of reinforcement schedules.
Animal conditioner

She was scared. The way this chicken was running and screeching and flapping her wings,
anyone could see she was scared. My dad reckons all chickens are lily-livered.
Tom, the farmer's son

What a question! Why don't they ask the chicken? She could tell you a few things about how they treat chickens over there. No wonder she left.
Feminist

They should let animals move in a big Skinner box if they want to know why this chicken, or any
chicken for that matter, moves across roads, rivers, valleys, mountains. It's normal for creatures
who look ahead, haven't forgotten their recent history, and are able to hear good things coming.
Long-winded radical behaviorist


This chicken saw trees, green meadows, flowers, butterflies, she heard birds singing and bees humming and a cock crowing - of course she was attracted across the road.  She understood
her chicks will have a decent life.
Environmentalist


Let's have a lot of helpful ideas on how to keep chickens happy and healthy!

FABBS

'FABBS' is the 'Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences', which sends news
to scientists every week or so; and thanks to Dr. Maria Malott, I happen to be on the mailing list.

Scientists all over the world believe they should look into the brain to explain why people behave.
A member of the Federation is 'ABA' - the Association for Behavior Analysis - and I don't know why
they don't make an issue of equating 'brain' science with 'mind' science' in FABBS publications.

Yesterday, FABBS sent this News Highlight:
________________________________________________________________
Pundits Exchange Views on Arizona Tragedy and What, If Any, Research is Needed
________________________________________________________________

" In the wake of the horrific shooting of twenty people -- in an Arizona shopping center this weekend, many people are asking the question: Who would perform such a horrible act of violence and why?
--- Scientists must understand - for both normal and abnormal behavior - what is happening in the brain, how the mind processes -- information, --- and the influence of social environment --
on cognition, emotion -- and biology.  Fortunately, this work is underway."

I argue for special research agenda and encourage everyone to think of the brain as an organ rather than a mind which processes information.
We might say a brain functions like an electro-magnetic battery.
Anyway, variables in the social environment - words, for example - affect individuals as well as the
brain cells plus the nerves and the glands.
I.P. Pavlov investigated the activation of salivary glands, as an example of conditioned reflexes.
The dog drooled over an audio-visual stimulus that activated one ... or more ... salivary glands.
Translated: dogs see and hear something and this affects the brain via the nerves in the head.
Animals mind, care, sense; a brain isn't an animal - not clever - much less, an intelligent Mind.

We - you and I - know that.
But we still talk of the brain as if we believe otherwise.
A habit we might easily drop; just like we no longer think of 'lily-livered' as causing cowardice.
We don't need to take the brain seriously as intelligent, perceptive, understanding. 
We can claim people are intelligent, perceptive etc; persons think, forget and remember; right?

The FABBS message ends with a call for "fundamental research" that will tell us how people decide
to behave in certain ways; and for "applied research" that ties this knowledge to real world settings.
My wishes, exactly.
I'd like to know what readers think.  Maybe personifying cells and organs is OK for young children.

July 5, 2012

Wishful thinking

Wishful thinking is tricky, at times you want something to happen so you interpret signs and signals too

optimistically.  Still, this is better than the other way; especially in the therapeutic relationship.

Expecting persons to behave themselves you're likely to 'reinforce successive approximations'.

So you approve ... and naturally that can make it come true.

And those can be really healthy, very pleasant socialisations.

The Behavior Analyst, 2010, 33, No.2 (Fall)

Yesterday (01/11/2011) The Behavior Analyst arrived by airmail.
I was excited to see a special issue with 10 papers on ideas from behavior analysts concerning
'the human response to climate change'.

That is printed on the cover, and I thought: " This is my lucky day (1/11/11!). Behaviorists will collaborate with other environmentalists and I shall retire into the background where I belong."
But no.

Nothing on re-conceptualisation: survival versus extinction; punishment versus reinforcement.
Nothing on how persons and their insides are sustained by lights and tones in the environment;
Nor on reviving cumulative measurements - B. F. Skinner's 'cumulative records' - to investigate what makes experimental subjects decide to go in a specific direction or move on from one place to the next
... and the next ... and the next ... and then come back again.

My paper Why I am A Radical Behaviorist where I tried putting my thoughts together, starts with an introduction; and now I think it may be a good thing to "blog" the entire document.  Perhaps this will become a suitable forum for a lively discussion as well.  The sad thing is, for years nothing marvelous
has been observed in the animal lab. My introduction to Why I am A Radical Behaviorist begins:

" The special 1984 Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior  was my professional eye-opener.
In an editorial PRESENT TRENDS AND DIRECTIONS FOR THE FUTURE Lattal & Harzem wrote: 'The science of behavior is important not only for its own sake, but for the sake of its implications for social survival. ' "

28 years have elapsed and still behavior scientists remain unconvinced vis-a-vis my arguments for spacious laboratories, expanded conditioning experiments with an additional 'dependent variable':
free locomotion, the movement of healthy, fully conscious, whole and nonvivisected organisms.
Keeping animals stationary was essential in 1938 ... and for years more ...
Now it is necessary to extend the environment, let animals move where they will and be able to answer important questions such as What keeps us in one location ? What attracts us from a distance?  Which common purpose accounts for co-operation in groups, nations, families?  

July 5, 2012           

Public / Private

Moments of Truth: Feelings
----------------------------------

Grandma:  What you feel is really private - right?

Grandson:  Sure; no one can know how I feel.

She:  But don't you show friends when you're sorry or happy?

He:  Of course I do.

She:  So?

He:  Okay, I get it.  Let's have lunch, I'm hungry!


Amazed by how quickly I'd won a point, I came back to it a week later
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

She:  We can fake it, that's why you agreed feeling is private.

He:   Yeah, anyone can act as though ...

She:  But the fact that you pretend shows you know people see what you feel - bad or good.
         Otherwise, why pretend?

He:   We don't think about it ...

Moments of Truth: Thinking
----------------------------------
Things seen and unseen with the naked eye are a big deal in psychology and behavior analysis.
For example, in day-to-day life we never look into people to find out what they think.
We look at what they do; and listen to what they say; and read what they write.
Brain cells can't say what the person does. Physiology doesn't tell us what individuals think.
If you question brain cells about what they think, they couldn't tell you.

When you keep your thoughts to yourself, others don't know your opinion; but when you air
them and explain why you hold your opinion, others can know not only what you think,
but what caused you to think as you do: what you saw, read, heard ... what interests you ...
what you stand for ... and so forth.

Like anyone else, you naturally make your thoughts public by voicing them in conversations.
As you write your views ... on paper ... on a wall ... in an email ... or elsewhere ... you also
argue or concur and then others know which side you're on: your beliefs, rour recollections.

Most psychologists still call thinking 'cognition' and say it goes on in the 'mind' or the brain.
Behavior analysts too, are sure thinking is 'mental' - 'a private event' - hard to measure.
I have to say this : the ways one can know what people are thinking, is by looking at them,
seeing what they do, listening to what they have to say ... making notes for a reminder.
The brain cannot see or hear - nor think for itself - individuals do that and much more.

Hearts don't feel either; they're the organs that work like a pump.
Brains don't initiate a dialogue with other brains, either.
Perhaps we should say brains function like photo-electro-magnetic batteries.

Pavlov's experiments show what dogs remember, recognize, why they anticipate, how they
come to expect or predict.  No one ever finds thoughts in a brain or a nervous systems, for
they are not persons who ask questions, seek information on the weather, sports, science,
politics, celebrities, and ... in general ... about what is happening in the world.

It goes without saying, the brain is involved in all that.
Wherever they stay - and wherever they go - individuals and their organs travel together.
We need our brain as much as other creatures need theirs.
Whales and dolphins swim about with the brain in their head.
We move north, east, west and south, with the brain in place.
And a brain is activated - energized by what individuals see and hear outside!

We musn't forget glands and the brain are affected by 'audio-visual stimuli'.
You and your brain are activated as others tell you or show what they think.

Additional points:
---------------------
Light rays and sound waves surround us and all living things depend on environmental quality
for their survival ... plant and human cultural cross-fertilisation ... nature and nurture combined.
I dream of collaberation amongst ecologists and scientists in an animal-conditioning environment,
searching for the contingencies which keep subjects psycho-somatically healthy, sane, normal, fit.

Convincing a teenager about public and private events may be easier than getting scientists to change
their opinion ... on the whole, understandable.  Nevertheless, there  are  very  good reasons for careful
optimism and the best is, no one loses, everyone profits.

I am in favour of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.
Abraham Lincoln

When it comes to having a central nervous sytem , and the ability to feel pain, hunger and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. Ingrid Newkirk

July 5, 2012

Plain versus Abstract

Despite not understanding what they were getting at, I used to admire scientists for the way they use so many abstract terms. Behaviorists changed that for me. B.F.Skinner was the first scientist whose writing totally amazed me.

For instance, he depicts a 'sound effect' of verbalisation:
being thirsty, you say 'my-eem' and a glass of water comes floating through the air towards you!
['my-eem' is the Hebrew word "מיים", meaning water]

Skinner called those episodes 'manding':
saying what one wants (eg. "I need a pen" or "Please pass the salt") and ... like magic ... the wish is fulfilled by another speaker who listens.
His 'functional' conceptualisation of language is as enlightening for me today as when I first read it, circa 45 years ago. I had never read anything so plain and simple and important about language before.

The point is: It Takes Two To Tango.

We must observe persons at least 2 by 2, if we want to know how they affect each other, verbally;
and 'observe' includes looking and listening from some distance away: no pushing ... no touching.

NOTE! That was originally posted on January 5, 2011.
Today is May 24, 2011, and  I  just revised the last two lines; they appear realistic.
Skinner, too, changed  his thinking by returning to words he'd written in the past:

"I see other implications and relations. I had thought that something of the same sort would happen when other people  read these papers. They would add things which occurred to them because of their special interests and special knowledge, and a joint contribution would be possible. Too often this has not happened. The misunderstandings triggered by my papers apparently did not suggest further implications to many commentators.
       Why have I not been more readily understood? Bad exposition on my part? All I can say is that I worked very hard on these papers, and I believe they are consistent one with another. The central position, however, is not traditional, and that may be the problem. To move from an inner determination of behavior to an environmental determination is a difficult step. Many governmental, religous, ethical, political, and economic implications might also have been considered, but most of the contributions do not venture that far afield." (1984) 

Again Skinner raises my morale, lightens my load, reminds me why I am a 'radical' behaviorist.
The pivotal issue is still the same:
moving from internal to environmental causes for the behavior of organisms.
Pavlov started this by showing audio-visual stimuli affecting a gland ... hence also the brain and the nerves ... from a distance beyond the body of each experimental subject.
Skinner named that respondent conditioning. I feel like making a speech:

Ladies and Gentlemen!   Readers and Speakers!   Scientists and Professors!
By chance I saw a mobile rat with the aid of imagined cumulative records.
From that time to this, my 'functional' description of language has widened and I can only suggest you assess this phenomenal instrument for yourselves and your students, in some library or classroom, with convenient access to past and contemporary literature, journals and chapters and Google and all.
Before you decide anything I think you could design your simulated graphs with your own hand.
Thank you very much for your attention.

July 5, 2012

Back after a long time

With encouragement from my three wonderful sons I want to explain
how I became a radical behaviorist,

I hope this will be lead to fruitful discussions on how to expand Skinner boxes so that
behavioral technology will be globally applied  and  behaviorism  accepted as a viable
philosophy of science.
I have written and spoken to people about these topics for years, and now I intend to.
write on this blog every few days.  Readers' comments are very welcome.

Leah