BEHAVIOR SCIENCE: MAKING IT SING
Part IV
Applied science
Renewing my attempts to explain my position, I now take the reader back to a more distant past, before ABA and TEAB drifted apart; when investigators took replication seriously as prerequisite for applications, in the home, in the clinic and in the classroom.
In 1956 for example, regarding Skinner’s ‘operant conditioning’
“ At the level of practical behavior, the most striking results have been obtained in animal training and programed instruction. These practical demonstrations serve as important empirical supports for certain aspects of the system – a kind of support very much needed for learning theories and notably lacking thus far. No other learning theorist has been able to train an animal before an audience in a prompt and predictable manner, while at the same time epitomizing the principles of his theory.” “The empirical demonstration that learning is under the experimenter’s control is important and if what happens can be described in terms of the system, so much better for the system. The programed learning work has opened up important avenues of instructional advance in both schools and industry.”
In 1964:
“For many years Skinner has been working systematically from a highly objective, relatively a- theoretical point of view.” He has obtained “technical achievements” in controlling behavior “especially by means of intermittent reinforcement.”
“He has been able to teach animals to perform highly complex acts and to differentiate subtle differences of external stimuli. …… The development of programed instruction is one outcome of these achievements and the Skinnerian methods have been successfully extended to many situations of behavioral study and control. …… Skinner feels that punishment as a form of social control should be shunned”
A Task Force Report from the American Psychiatric Association, concluded:
“ The work of the Task Force has reaffirmed our belief that behavior therapy and behavioral principles employed in the analysis of clinical phenomena have reached a stage of development where they unquestionably have much to offer informed clinicians in the service of modern clinical and social psychiatry.” 1973
Behavior Analysis and Mental Illness:
“We see in the method of free-operant conditioning probably one of the most vigorous techniques yet devised by experimental psychology for the development, maintenance, modification and analysis of acquired motor behavior in an experimental setting …… As we continue to perfect the application of (B.F. Skinner’s) method to the analysis of psychotic behavior, we discover more and more research leads. There seems to be no doubt that the method should be considered … by investigators of chronic schizophrenia. ” 1956
“During the last 60 years experimental psychology has made great progress in objective behavioral measurement. The most sensitive, objective and sophisticated of these methodological developments are those of B.F. Skinner and his associates. These methods are generally described as ‘free-operant conditioning’ … For the first time we have brought a few facts of psychosis into the body of natural science.’ 1960
Behavior Analysis and Education:
“ A small but rapidly growing group of psychologists can now offer education (1) a set of concepts and principles derived entirely from the experimental analysis of behavior, (2) a methodology for the practical application of these concepts and principles, (3) a research method that deals with changes in individual behavior, and (4) a philosophy of science that says: ‘Look carefully…’ To act on this offer from the small minority of psychologists, educators are advised to learn the details of this approach from primary sources…” 1970
Behavior Analysis and its application to human behavior:
“The science of behavioral control …... was born in the laboratory with the discovery of the ‘conditioned reflex’……Over the years behavioral scientists have worked on the premise that human behavior, like other natural phenomena is subject to natural laws. Through a careful experimental analysis laws of behavior have been derived which have increased man’s understanding far in excess of what was once thought possible… laboratory studies, first with animals …… slowly built up a store of knowledge which eventually allowed for the extension of both method and principles to settings beyond the confines of the laboratory … applications of the principles … are reaching out toward every corner of our culture… facts are with us…” 1966.
“From the behaviorist reformulation of psychology, behavior emerged as a directly manipulable datum, and what the behaviorist learned about controlling behavior has recently reached the stage of widespread technological application …… the experimental analysis of behavior is … employed in mental hospitals, institutions for the retarded, day care centers, reading clinics, guidance centers, prisons, educational institutions and outpatient clinics …… if a technology allows effective remedial action, it should equally permit the devising of preventive measures. The time has come for us to begin suggesting new tactics for the prevention of behavioral problems.” 1970
Skinner’s vision and passionate appeal in 1972
“Another practical consequence of basic research remains to be emphasized. Our culture has made us all sensitive to the good of others, and we are generously reinforced when we act for their good, but the display of gratitude which reinforces the teacher or therapist who is in immediate contact with another person is often dangerous. Those who are especially sensitive to the good of others are often induced to go into teaching or therapy rather than basic research. Progress would be more rapid if the same kind of reinforcement could be brought to bear on the researcher, if he could be appropriately affected by the extraordinary extent to which he is also acting for the good of others. The basic researcher has, in fact, a tremendous advantage. Any slight advance in our understanding of human behavior which leads to improved practices in behavior modification will eventually work for the good of billions of people.” (original emphasis)
As a practitioner in a helping profession, I am a witness: grateful clients have brightened my day. Despite the need for additional data, I proclaim ‘my psychology’ derives from experiments where animals and scientists ‘talk’: Doctor Dolittle is alive! I explain why conditioning is psychosomatic - and no one is startled. [41]
People seem to care less about being compared with ‘lower’ species.
I am astonished to hear Cesar Millan assert he trains people and rehabilitates dogs. I remember being warned not to say train in connection with humans. [42]
Social and geographical climates appear to have changed: researchers from diverse disciplines are attempting to delay - or prevent - the extinction of animals and vegetation: they fight for survival, preserve environments, protect natural resources, [41] Murray Sidman notes: “The pursuit of science is an intensely personal affair.” Yet not a solitary venture: “As a young graduate student …. I felt that my work had to be different, that it had to produce something that would startle the world. Along these lines I once wrote a paper, describing some of my work, in which I emphasized how different my experiments were from anything else that had ever been done. One of my teachers, W.N. Schoenfeld, agreed that the data were very interesting. But he went on to add that I had written the paper from a peculiar point of view. I had emphasized the differences between my work and everyone else’s. But science does not ordinarily advance that way. It is the job of science to find orderly relations among phenomena, not differences. It would have been more useful if I could have pointed out the similarities between my work and previous experiments.” (original emphasis)
[42] The ‘dog whisperer’, host of Dog Whisperer on the National Geographic Television channel
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