Do you know if anyone has elaborated upon what Skinner said in About Behaviorism about "seeing in the absence of the thing seen"? Thanks.
Hi Anonymous
I do not know of any one specific elaboration; however, I have to assume that relational frame theorists have something to say about it. Their work focuses on associative learning - i.e., the relations we make between events (or stimuli) and the language we attach to it.
Your timing is also great because there is a recent article in The Behavior Analyst (see Hayes and Fryling, 2015) that touches on stimulus-stimulus association and “stimulus substitution”, using an example of ‘seeing’ a person when you see their car. Seeing something (i.e., a behaviour) in the absence of the thing to be seen to me means that some other thing (i.e., a stimulus) in the environment is cuing that ‘image’. The function of which has been transferred from one stimulus to another (Hayes & Fryling, 2015). Check out the article when you get a chance!
Reference:
Hayes, L.J. & Fryling, M.J. (2015). A historical perspective on the future of behavior science. The Behavior Analyst, 38(2), 149-161.