radicalbehavioristramblings

[radicalbehavioristramblings]

Weekend at Bernie’s (Sans Behaviour)

I have been blogging about behaviour, ABA, behaviourism  for 5 years now and I guess I never really covered ‘What IS behaviour?’. Just what are we talking about when we mention “behaviour”? 

From a simple, methodological perspective, a behaviour is any action (i.e., muscle movement) performed by ourselves or others. We should be able to see it or hear it. and it must pass the dead man’s test.

[image description: a man’s body being propped up on a lawn chair with a drink and a cigarette as if he is alive.  He’s fully clothed wearing a blue jacket.]

If Bernie can do it, it ain’t behaviour.

See Bernie wearing that jacket?  Not behaviour.  But if he could have dressed himself, the actions he took to put that jacket on would be behaviour.

Is he holding that glass or is his hand just resting there?  We may define one’s hold or grip by the motions the hand or fingers make towards an object but not by its resting state.

Assuming decomposition takes effect, his body will eventually lose weight. Losing weight is not a behaviour; however there are several other behaviours that may cause one to lose weight.  

Sometimes what we see or hear are the outcomes or products of behaviour. It’s important to distinguish between the two when assessing and measuring what people are doing and giving definition to behaviour.

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African HeroRats detect landmines.

Using positive reinforcement behavior that is respectful of the animals, African pouched rats are taught to identify the explosives, receiving treats for their efforts. After months of training, the rats are set a test and accredited as HeroRats if they pass.

The pouched rats are perfect for the job; intelligent with a keen sense of smell, they are small enough not to trigger mines and large enough to be easily identifiable in the field. No rat has been killed in a minefield. Banana for scale

The rats can clear two hundred square meters in just 20 minutes. It would take humans with metal detectors five days to cover the same area.

The rats live for up to eight years, but retire after six and live out their twilight years eating avocados, apples and bananas, and being regularly patted by their handlers.

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Backlight | sebastian holthöfer

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Dateline NBC did a segment on teaching kids gun safety featuring the work of behaviour analyst, Dr. Raymond Miltenberger.  

His research has found that it is not enough to just talk to kids about what to do if they see a gun; rather, they need exposure to simulated and close to real-life scenarios with opportunities to role-play, practice, get feedback and be tested over and over on their responses to a gun until they get it right.  This teaching method is known as Behavioural Skills Training (BST) and it’s used not only to teach gun safety but also pedestrian safety, abduction prevention, work place safety and staff training (to name a few).  

The unfortunate part about this piece is the lack of real overview of the BST model and the role of behaviour analysis in designing an effective treatment package. Tiffany Kilby (The Behavior Station) offers some feedback to Dateline NBC and a great summary of the components to BST that were overlooked: https://thebehaviorstation.com/dear-dateline-nbc/

Related post:

Behavioural Skills Training with my Opa

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I'm sorry Ralphie but this hat is cute...

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Thank you thank you thank you!

More Behaviourism Meets Industrial Psychology

variousnotes

I would also recommend checking out JOBM for possible special issues. Mark Mattaini would also be a good source as he tends to merge behavioral and sociological concepts. Maria Malott or Ramona Houmanfar might also have some good recommendations!

Thanks for adding more names, resources!

[radicalbehavioristramblings]

Thank you so much for your feedback! I have read some of Aubrey Daniels writings and I have read the science of consequences (and loved it!) Looks like I will be traveling into unwalked territory here!

Hello! I am an industrial/organizational psychology graduate (master's) student, but I am much more interested in incorporating behavior analysis in the workplace than most of my colleagues. I intend to do my thesis on a behaviorist interpretation of a social/ cognitive theory, and I am on the search for scholarly articles. My main question is: do you know of any authors/publications that have done behaviorist interpretations of works from other paradigms? (I have had a difficult time thus far!)

Hello hardinhl and thanks for the ask!

I can’t think of two many noted authors who throw behaviourist interpretations of other psychological or cognitive models.  There is of course, B.F. Skinner who often referred to his colleagues’ works and put a behaviour analysis view on them; most notably in About Behaviorism.  More recent authors to check out include: Steven Hayes, Anthony Biglan and Susan M. Schneider, author of Science of Consequences (she throws in some genetics and neuroscience stuff into the behaviourism mix).  And of course, if you haven’t checked out Aubrey Daniels’ work, then I recommend him too.  He does a great job of applying a behaviour analytic lens to common psychology theories as it applies to the workplace and debunking commonly held psychology myths.

Your best bet for philosophical writings on behaviourism with other schools of thought would be The Behavior Analyst journal as well as submissions to Behavior Analyst Online.  

Hope these resources help in your research.  All the best, 

~ Tricia-Lee (Behaviourist at Play)   

Related Post:

Behaviourism meets social learning theory

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Pulling hair, biting nails, picking skin are not simply ‘nervous’ habits, a new study finds, suggesting they are instead associated with perfectionism, frustration and boredom.

According to the abstract, participants were asked to report on their urges to engage in bodily-focused repetitive behaviours (BRBs e.g., nail biting, hair pulling, skin picking) during contrived emotional experiences such as boredom, frustration and calm/relaxation. 

I’m thinking future research can look at actual measurement of the BRBs during those conditions - i.e., a functional analysis.  Verbal behaviour (reporting) is not the same as doing the behaviour. 

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Classical Conditioning. Overshadowing is implied.

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Burrhus Frederic

When picking names out for my dog, I really wanted to name him Burrhus Frederic...

Skinner probably wasn't gonna go over so well.

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"A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying." -B.F. Skinner (Beyond Freedom and Dignity, 1972)

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"Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way." -B.F. Skinner (Walden Two 1948)

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Let's talk about "Intrinsic" Motivation ( and probably revisit it about a hundred times)...

hi. Let's just start with the fact that intrinsic motivation is not a real thing. 

"Intrinsic motivation: the motivation to engage in an activity for its own sake".

No. Just no. 

We do things because we find them reinforcing. We do not do things because we like to do them for their own sake, we like to do things or engage in behaviors because of the consequences we get from them. It is possible, however, that simply engaging in a behavior can occur because it has been reinforced at a high rate in the past. The motivation literature is littered with these answers to why we do things, but the reality is that people label things as intrinsically motivating when we cannot see or easily identify the reinforcer that is truly "motivating" the behavior. 

Another huge pet peeve that falls under the intrinsic motivation umbrella is the idea that extrinsic rewards (rewards-- mind, you... not identified as really being reinforcers and, therefore, we cannot even be sure they will increase a behaviors occurrence-- that are externally administered) have been shown in creativity research to result in a decrease in creative behaviors which has been written off as the result of extrinsic rewards undermining the creative process and diminishing intrinsic motivation. If a reinforcer is administered following a behavior, even a creative behavior, then that behavior will increase. That is the definition of the behavior/ reinforcer relationship known as reinforcement. The only issue here is the use of something as a consequence to a behavior that is assumed to be a reinforcer; if the behavior decreases following that particular consequence then it must have been a punisher for that behavior. Often it is thought that rewards equal reinforcers and therefore the utility of behavioral principles is written off as unusable outside of the laboratory and in the real world. 

Reinforcer assessments are absolutely essential to the utility of behavioral principles, otherwise we are just throwing consequences at behaviors hoping that they will work, potentially resulting in a decrease in a behavior we really wanted to increase. This has nothing to do with whether or not a reward is intrinsic or extrinsic, it has to do with whether or not that reward also functions as a reinforcer. 

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Grading student papers and read “participants are from a rural area and are mainly psychology majors, which could put a different perspective on things." Okay, if you know anything about research in psychology (or, let's say, are a psychology student and not a freshman) you should know that surveying psychology students is NOT a different perspective. This just made me laugh so much, oh child, you have so much to learn.