#radical behaviourism

[zooofgod]

I love so much the history of psychology, today I learnt that Skinners (the father of radical behaviourism) tried to develop a pigeons-controlled guided bomb to destroy Germans ships and was the most fucked up thing I could imagine.

[behaviouristatplay]

If you were asked to summarise what radical behaviourism is in one sentence, what would you say?

Simply put: Radical behaviourism is the philosophy behind the science of behaviour.

Done.

But then the next question might be, “What is that philosophy?”  or “What is the science of behaviour?”

And then I might add that radical behaviourist see most human responses and experiences as behaviour (internal and external, including thoughts and feelings) determined by events in time and space within the social, verbal and physical community.  The science of behaviour meanwhile is the experimentation with these events and analyzing their effect(s) on behaviour.

So, not one sentence exactly, but my 30-second schpeel nevertheless! 

Thanks for putting the question out there.

~ Tricia-Lee

Sources consulted:

Johnston, J.M. (2014). Radical behaviorism for ABA practitioners. Hudson, NY: Sloan Publishing.

[behaviouristatplay]

If some covert behaviours are just side effects of behaviour and contingencies of reinforcement and punishment, then why would the potential for then evolve at all/ what evolutionary advantage would they give?

Well hey there anonymous and thanks for the thought-provoking question.  My answer probably won’t do the research and philosophy on this subject any justice but I am also going to try to keep things fairly simple for my non-behaviour analytic readers.

First a primer: covert behaviours are those that occur within the person. They are our sensations, emotions, thoughts.  They are private and only experienced by the person.  They cannot be observed by an outsider; though some medical tools do allow for measurement and monitoring.   

While covert behaviours cannot be seen, they are conceptualized by radical behaviourists as operating under the same principles of our overt behaviours - i.e., the behaviours that can be observed and measured.  For more details, please see my previous post on covert behaviours. 

Seeing covert behaviours as “just side effects” of other behaviours and consequences seems to indicate they have less value.  The sensations and emotions we experience become part of the learning - either conditioned with consequences or they become the motivation/antecedent event for the next behaviour.  When we started to ‘talk’ about these sensations and emotions, we gave ‘thought’ to them  (i.e., verbal behaviours). We were then able to share with others what we had learned. Others learned from our verbal behaviours what to do (i.e., to gain access to reinforcers) and what not to do (i.e., avoid punishers).  

Imagine the first person to discover that fire - while it produced heat and cooked food - burns the skin and that the burn hurts a lot. The next generation learned through the sharing of experiences that fire burns and can hurt.  In the presence of fire now come thoughts of “hurt” “pain” (or however it was described to them in the language/vocalizations/gestures of the time).  Their behaviour changes in order to avoid possibly being burned and experiencing the same fate.

Now imagine the first foragers learning which green leafy substance is a tasty and energy sustaining piece of food versus those that taste awful and cause stomach issues. In order to teach others what they have learned, they would have to note the sensations experienced with certain features of leaf; features requiring some kind of label.  They tell others what to bring back and what to leave on the ground.  

Due to today’s modern technologies and conveniences, it is hard to see the survival factor in many of our behaviours - whether overt or covert.  Yet, what we continue to do over time is seek out positive experiences and avoid negative ones.  We have so many things in our environment that bring us joy and pleasure outside of our basic reinforcers like food, heat, shelter etc.  They entertain us. They occupy our time (especially since we have to do very little to survive at this point). They allow us to be social - to give and to receive.  At the same time, we engage in plenty of behaviours that successfully avoid aversive consequences thanks to the rules handed down by our ancestors.  These rules and our environment have evolved over time because of the unfortunate experience of others before us. One only has to look at road signs and traffic control methods to see how we have learned to make a city move more efficiently yet safely at the same time.

Even though covert behaviours can be considered “side effects” or after thoughts from our other behaviours, they still play a role in our survival and well-being. In the telling of our experiences, we end up shaping the rules others can follow.  

[behaviouristatplay]

Could you outline a behaviourist account of "co-vert behaviour" please?

Sure I can Anonymous!

All of our behaviours are categorized as either overt or covert.  Overt behaviours are those that are observable by someone else.  Covert behaviours are that those that occur within a person’s skin. They are the thoughts, emotions and sensations we experience.  They cannot be seen or heard by an outside observer.  

An example:

I see my neighbour and think to myself, I should say “Hi.” (covert behaviour)

I wave and say, “Hi” (overt behaviour).

We know operant (i.e., the three-term contingency) and classical conditioning explain many of our overt behaviours; as demonstrated by hundreds of empirical studies that define and measure overt behaviours through a series of experiments. Since covert behaviours cannot be seen they are near impossible to explain empirically. However, radical behaviourists apply the same principles of operant and classical conditioning to give explanation to covert behaviours.  

What can occur is a covert behaviour accompanied with other overt behaviours which we have learned to discriminate and label as likely being representative of the covert behaviour.  Pain is often accompanied by certain bodily movements and facial expressions.  If I see someone wince, I typically assume they are in pain. Experiencing something funny is often accompanied by laughing. We typically relate laughing as, “something is funny” and confirm the source.  We may never be able to measure “funny” but we can measure laughing and relate to other behaviours from there.  

And then come relational frame theorists who work at experimenting with principles of behaviour to empirically validate covert behaviours. That’s a whole other wave of behaviour science requiring another post for me to go there (and likely not written by me as my knowledge is very basic and limited).

~Tricia-Lee

[ihatecogsciandphilosophy]

Free Will & Radical Behaviourism

My professor's intuition was, I believe, roughly as follows. 

1. If Physicalism is true, all of our actions are determined by states of our brain (roughly).

2. There are certain circumstances which we intuitively think constitute an impediment to a person's Free Will--e.g., we might think that a person, in virtue of some fact about their brain, does not act freely all of the time.

3. Insofar as those individuals in example cases like (2) act of their own will--that is, have their actions determined by their own brain--they are as free as any other person (provided that other person is also acting of their own will).

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4. Therefore, our intuitions in (2) are incorrect--we must attribute an equal amount of freedom to everyone insofar as they act of their own will.

5. People either do or do not have Free Will. 6. It doesn't make sense to attribute Free Will to those paradigmatic examples for which we would intuitively describe individuals as lacking freedom,

---------------------------------------- 7. Therefore, we have to deny Free Will across the board. 8. Therefore, people do not have Free Will.

When I went to see her during he office hours, I focused on the first grouping of ideas.  My goal was to convince her that we have what is at least a plausible reason to distinguish between typical, good candidates for Free Will, and those paradigmatic individuals whom we intuitively think do not possess Free Will (or who do not possess it to the same extent as other people). 

I began by pointing out that when we are concerned about Free Will, we aren't concerned about completely unrestricted freedom.  I cannot will myself to fly (or defy physics in other ways), yet we wouldn't take this as a reason to deny that I had Free Will.  The question, then, becomes on of what sort of freedom is relevant for Free Will.  Roughly, I said, it's going to be something like the sort of freedom which allows us to be morally responsible some of the time.  Given this, the question becomes what is required for us to be morally responsible?  First, I provided my counterexample: we might need to be God (this is roughly Strawson's position), in which case Free Will isn't something we've got.  However, there's room for the Physicalist to "save" Free Will.  Their goal is to give a plausible account of the sort of freedom required for moral responsibility which will align with our intuitions about Free Will--which people have it, and which people don't. 

The criteria I suggested to my professor was Capacity.  Different individuals have different capacities for actually acting as moral agents.  Due to some damage to some person's brain, they might have less of a capacity for regulating certain behaviour.  I, however, am not impeded in that way.  To the extent that we are different in this respect, I possess a greater degree of freedom than this hypothetical person.  (I fleshed this out in a bit more detail when conversing with her, but that's not super important).

She followed along with my thinking just fine, and she absolutely found it plausible.  The problem she had, however, was the issue of what it is in virtue of that we have the capacities we do.  I might have enough freedom of the relevant sense to be considered a Free agent, but I might still have less than some other Free agent--one with a "better" brain than me, perhaps.  I might, as a result, be more disposed to do bad stuff.  But since I have very limited control over my own capacities, it seems wrong to hold me morally responsible for bad things that I do.  It's no fault of my own that my capacities are worse than those of some other person.  If we follow this line of thought, we have to conclude that only God can be morally responsible (and thus have Free Will). 

I think I probably helped her get clearer on her own thoughts on the matter.  I probably convinced her that there are options on the table for the Physicalist, though I'm not sure either of us left with a great deal of confidence in those options.

[behaviouristatplay]

Operationally defining a process as 'behavioural'

I was brought into an exchange between cognitivedefusion and scienceofeds re: defining a process as 'behavioural' as opposed to 'psychological'.  See below for a sample of the discussion.  Original post is here and the article in question is here.

cognitivedefusion how is something a behavioral but not psychological issue?

I don’t know if I totally follow their logic. Maybe behaviouristatplay has some insight? I’m looking at the actual article and I’m getting lost when reading the results section focused on factor A:

"Participants defining Factor A endorsed the view that the path to bulimia might begin with individuals experimenting with binging and purging behaviors (12: +2), perhaps falsely believing that it will help them achieve their desired body shape, with the notion that this behavior works as a method to eat what you want and stay thin rejected."

That…sounds like there’s a psychological component? 

Thanks for bring me in the loop.  Not that I am any authority over what may be considered 'behavioural' versus not but I think the field of psychology has struggled in separating behavioural processes as something completely different from a traditional psychological process. The over-simplification of a behavioural approach/viewpoint as being just 'response leads to consequence' lends it to standing alone separate from the other more complex schools of thought. In trying to create a dichotomy between the two, the field of psychology continuously fails to recognize that we are often talking about similar effects, just with different terminology or sequencing of events.

The term 'psychological' conjurs up associations with the brain, the mind, emotions and cognition; often placing the cause for or dysfunction within one of these elements.  The term 'behavioural' conjurs up associations with reward, punishment and environment, placing the cause or dysfunction as a function of the environment and the consequences experienced.   What gets lost in the 'behavioural approach' label are the operational definitions for behaviour, reward and punishment.  As a radical behaviourist, I see thoughts and emotions as behaviours; the consequences of which can be the antecedent for the overt behaviours associated with a disorder.  The "reward" can come in the amelioration of physiological symptoms conditioned with social/environmental factors or associated with these thoughts/emotions. This is the effect of negative reinforcement (an often misunderstood maintaining variable in many dysfunctional behaviours).

Perhaps as this article was suggesting, people seeing something as a 'behavioural' process are concerning themselves with the actions of self or others; actions which can be attributed to the environment and their consequences.  It suggests to people that patterns of behaviours (including where one's thoughts and emotions fit in) can be found and re-arranged.  People aligning their disorder with a 'psychological' process may concern themselves with how their mind is doing and that the mind needs "fixing" or changing.  If I could just change my thoughts or address underlying emotions I would not engage in dysfunctional behaviour [X]. Unfortunately, this is often done at the expense of acknowledging the effects the social and physical environment play on behaviour.  You can convince yourself to "be happy with what you see" (an over-simplification, I know).  That doesn't change that there are well established patterns of behaviour that come from social and physical cues and these need exploring as well.

So, can you separate the behavioural from the psychological?  If the only defining factor is that one deals with thoughts and emotions and the other one does not then this radical behaviourist doesn't think so.       

[behaviouristatplay]

Am I right in thinking that Skinner rejected the idea that thoughts, feelings, etc played a causal role in behaviour, or am I misinterpreting his book "About Behaviourism"? If he did, do modern Behaviour Analysts still think this?

Hi there Anonymous and thanks for the question.  

You are correct in your interpretation of B.F. Skinner’s work in About Behaviorism.  He and today’s behaviour analysts reject the notion that thoughts, feeling, inner mental processes are the causes for (or reasons behind) behaviour. When we find ourselves answering the question of “Why did Johnny do X?” with some reference to thinking, feeling, knowing, remembering etc. (all verbs attributed to the mind), this is referred to as mentalism.  

Do any of these sound familiar?

Why did Johnny hit his friend?  Because he was mad.

Why did Billy cry?  Because he was sad.

Why did Jenny get 100% on her math quiz?  Because she is smart.

How did Alex get to the concert on her own?  She remembered the route.

These mentalistic explanations offer no insight on how to stop Johnny from hitting or how to replicate Jenny’s results for the next math test.  To illustrate: people are allowed to feel mad.  It is what happens immediately before and after the hitting that tells us what is really going on.  In Johnny’s case, his friend may have taken a toy away from him (antecedent), so he hits (behaviour) because in the past when he has hit someone who had his toy, he got the toy back (consequence). 

Rejecting thoughts, feelings, mental processes as the cause for behaviour is not the same thing as rejecting their existence -  something behaviourism is often incorrectly criticized for. Rather, Skinner viewed thoughts, feelings and other mental processes as behaviours.  He referred to them as “private events” which, like other behaviours, are open to analysis - if only we could see or hear them. In some cases we can analyze the verbal behaviour of speaking, writing, signing or using some other augmentative communication form as the public version of these private events. But, as Skinner warned, we also have to be sure the verbal behaviour is reliable; that it corresponds to the private event that is the thought or feeling. For example, there is nothing stopping me from saying “I feel good” when really I am experiencing private feelings of sadness.

Modern day behaviour analysts follow this paradigm allowing us to objectively measure only that which we can see or hear.  Adhering to this paradigm allows for behaviour analysis to occur and a functional relationship to be discovered - a relationship we can either repeat or alter depending on the behaviour goal.  

When providing explanations for behaviours, remember to check your mentalism!

[behaviouristatplay]

Interview with a Radical Behaviourist

I was recently interviewed by Royan Lee, a teacher in the school board I work for (and met on Twitter) on my thoughts as a radical behaviourist working in the school system.  He posted the Q & A on his blog, The Spicy Learning Blog

Please check out the interview (as well as the rest of his blog).  My goal is to open the dialogue about the role of Applied Behaviour Analysis in the education system and I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss this with teacher colleagues.  Thank you to Royan for reaching out and wanting to know more about ABA.  

Lately I have been craving conversations with professionals in education that aren't necessarily teachers, administrators, or consultants. Don't get me wrong, I love all of you, but I think we shou...

P.S., Watch for a similar interview where I ask for thoughts on being an educator in an ever-changing system.