Chapter 1: Definition and Characteristics of Applied Behavior Analysis
Chapter 1: Definition and Characteristics of Applied Behavior Analysis Chapter Summary The word “science” is often used as a noun, conflated with its products—as in “What does science tell us?”—but those products are outcomes of the behavior of large numbers of inquisitive individuals who engage in a systematic approach for seeking and organizing information about the natural world. Science really has one overall goal: to achieve a thorough understanding of the phenomena under study, which, in the field of applied behavior analysis, is socially important behavior that is meaningfully associated with an individual’s quality of life. Different types of scientific investigation yield different degrees of understanding that represent progressively greater ability to influence given phenomena. Description refers to a scientist collecting facts about entities or events, which can raise interesting questions and establish hypotheses for further study. Prediction is the outcome of more systematic observation when a scientist finds that two events often covary; when correlations are demonstrated in this manner, the probability of one event occurring can be more confidently predicted given the presence of the other event, although at this level the scientist cannot refer to the relationship between the two events as a causal one. When a scientist actually manipulates events, however, and shows that a change they make in one event (an “independent variable”) repeatedly results in some change in a second event (a target or “dependent variable”)—and when they have accounted for and reduced the likelihood that some other variable is responsible for that change— when, in other words, they have demonstrated a functional relationship between these variables, they have achieved experimental control of the phenomena being studied. Behavior analysts consider control to be the most desirable level of understanding because functional relations are the potential basis for developing applied techniques for behavior change. In this respect, behavior analysis is characterized by pragmatism, the philosophical position that the “truth” of scientific findings is to be judged by the extent to which they lead to effective action. The pursuit of scientific understanding of natural phenomena—including behavior—is characterized by an overriding set of assumptions and values: determinism, empiricism, experimentation, replication, parsimony, and philosophic doubt. Determinism—the notion that the universe is a lawful and orderly place in which all events occur as the result of other events—is the assumption upon which scientific endeavors are predicated. Indeed, if events were not determined in a reasonably orderly fashion—if phenomena randomly occurred simply as a matter of chance—then there would be no basis for viable technologies of behavior change. The development of useful behavior change techniques, in other words, rests on the belief that all behavior is the result of specifiable conditions and that these conditions, once identified, can be managed in a way that will influence the future probability of behavior. Other qualities that guide success in science include thoroughness, curiosity, perseverance, diligence, ethics, and honesty. John B. Watson—one of the first and best known individuals to identify as a “behaviorist” early in the 20 th century—departed from psychology’s focus at the time on introspection and mental processes, and suggested that human behavior could be studied using the observational tactics of natural science. His behaviorism, which came to be known as S-R psychology—and also came to be known for fantastic claims—could not account for apparently “spontaneous” acts: for behavior, in other words, that lacked obvious antecedents. Numerous efforts to fill these explanatory gaps once again elevated mental states and constructs to causal status with respect to human behavior. B. F. Skinner, in contrast, remained focused on environmental events and eventually showed, through what he called the experimental analysis of behavior (EAB), that much behavior is changed and maintained by the consequences it produces. Thus Skinner identified operant behavior and elaborated Watson’s formulation with a new paradigm called the three-term contingency (S-R-S), a model that remains the fundamental unit of study and focus of practice in the four domains of modern behavior analysis: behaviorism, the experimental analysis of behavior, applied behavior analysis (ABA), and behavior analytic practice. Skinner’s conceptual formulation of behaviorism—the philosophical domain of behavior analysis—is known as radical behaviorism because it maintains that thoughts and feelings (what he called “private events” that occur “inside the skin”) are simply less accessible forms of behavior that otherwise can be understood in the same terms and studied by the same means as overt behavior, without appealing to intervening hypothetical constructs.