Behavior analysis is not ultimately about behavior

The Analysis of Whose Verbal Behavior?

Recent reviews of behavior analytic journals suggest that participant demographics are inadequately described. These reviews have been limited to brief periods across several journals, emphasized specific variables (e.g., socioeconomic status), or only included specific populations. The current scoping review included all published articles in The Analysis of Verbal Behavior from 1982-2020. Six demographic variables were coded for 1888 participants across 226 articles. Despite small sample sizes (i.e., fewer than six participants in 62.3% of studies), only age (85.4%) and gender identity (71.6%) were reported for the majority of participants. Socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, and primary language were reported for fewer than 20% of participants. Over time, the number of demographic variables reported showed a slight increasing trend, although considerable variability was observed across years. These findings suggest that editors and reviewers must consider what constitutes acceptable participant characterization. Researchers might also be emboldened to extend their work to populations currently underrepresented in the journal.

The untapped potential of behaviour analysis and interprofessional care

Interprofessional collaboration has become a sought-after component of quality mental health care. Higher education institutions and mental health organizations seek to equip clinicians with the ability to provide cohesive clinical services while working collaboratively with a diverse group of professionals. Although research suggests that there may be benefits of interprofessional collaboration in mental health settings, collaborative practice initiatives have struggled with conceptual and methodological limitations. A behaviour analytic contribution to interprofessional care provides a philosophical position with an analytical goal distinguished by the prediction and influence of events, theoretical clarity, and methodological rigour that are needed within interprofessional research and practice. At the philosophical level, the extension of functional contextualism to interprofessional care research may provide a framework to achieve the valued ends of improving interprofessional collaboration and ultimately improving health-related outcomes for service users. Interprofessional collaboration can be conceptualized as metacontingency, a behaviour analytic concept that allows for a group level analysis of contributing social components. This paper uses the example of mental health care to guide a conceptual analysis of the potential application of behaviour analytic methodology within interprofessional practice, research, and education.

B. F. Skinner's Radical Behaviorism: Historical Misconstructions and Grounds for Feminist Reconstructions

Feminist critiques of traditional psychological approaches have generated feminist revisions, most notably in psychoanalytic and developmental theory. Although behaviorism has attracted strong objections from feminist critics, claims of its antithetical positioning vis-à-vis feminist theory construction have generally remained unchallenged. A preliminary step in formulating grounds for a synthesis is to clarify multiple meanings of behaviorism. Specifically, the fusion of Watson's methodological behaviorism and Skinner's radical behaviorism in the literature must be disentangled in order to address the latter's potential as a conceptual framework for constructing feminist theory. Key conceptual features of radical behaviorism that suggest its potential as a vehicle for building a feminist epistemology include: radical behaviorism's contextualistic world view, its interpretation of agency, its treatment of private experience and self knowledge, and its understanding of the pivotal functions of the verbal community.

Teleology and teleonomy in behavior analysis

Teleological descriptions and explanations refer to purpose as consequent to a phenomenon. They become nonteleological if purpose is represented as antecedent to the phenomenon. Such nonteleological statements are called teleonomic, especially when they refer to antecedent genetic "programs." In behavior analysis, purpose is attributed to the organism's history of consequences. Such a history may leave a trace-physiological (mechanism) or mental (cognitivism)-or the issue of traces may be irrelevant (contextualism). The history or trace is antecedent to current responding, and thus is not a teleological concept in the classical sense. It could be called a teleonomic concept, but this designation is undesirable if it implies exclusively genetic programming, because the history or trace is genetically programmed in evolutionary selection but not in ontogenetic selection. Therefore, the concepts of teleology and teleonomy are not useful for behavior analysis, and invoking them can be misleading. The concept of purpose can be useful if it is not reified.

A descriptive taxonomy of environmental operations and its implications for behavior analysis

Environmental operations may be classified according to whether they have evocative or function-altering effects. Evocative events, such as the presentation of unconditioned and conditioned stimuli, establishing operations, and discriminative stimuli, serve to increase, decrease, or maintain the momentary frequency of behavior. Function-altering operations, such as operant and respondent conditioning, the correlation of stimuli, and the presentation of certain verbal stimuli, serve to increase, decrease, or maintain the evocative and function-altering (e.g., reinforcing or punishing) functions of other events. This paper expands upon the functional taxonomy of environmental events described by Michael (1993a). The resulting classification scheme should permit behavior analysts to more easily respond to similarities and differences between functional environmental events. This paper discusses implications of the suggested taxonomy for how behavior analysts talk about motivational variables, discriminative stimuli, the operant unit of analysis, and the distinction between operant and respondent conditioning.

The real and imagined harmful effects of rewards: implications for clinical practice

In recent years, a number of researchers and social critics have cautioned against the widespread application of behavioral interventions on the grounds that the philosophy of behaviorism is fundamentally manipulative and damaging to creative and intrinsically motivated behavior. Most central to their arguments are concerns about the harmful effects of "extrinsic" rewards. Though concerns about the allegedly harmful effects of "rewards" on intrinsically motivated actions may have been partially allayed by a recent meta-analysis, proponents of the view that intrinsic interest is eroded by the delivery of contingent rewards will likely continue to attest to the dangers of operant conditioning and its application to human behavior. The present manuscript addresses the content of claims about the harmful effects of extrinsic rewards. While consideration is given to the existing behavior therapy literature and its treatment of "natural" versus "arbitrary" rewards, some surprising convergences between the views of self-determination theorists and behavioral practitioners are noted.

Applying behavior analysis to clinical problems: review and analysis of habit reversal

This article provides a review and analysis of habit reversal, a multicomponent procedure developed by Azrin and Nunn (1973, 1974) for the treatment of nervous habits, tics, and stuttering. The article starts with a discussion of the behaviors treated with habit reversal, behavioral covariation among habits, and functional analysis and assessment of habits. Research on habit reversal and simplified versions of the procedure is then described. Next the article discusses the limitations of habit reversal and the evidence for its generality. The article concludes with an analysis of the behavioral processes involved in habit reversal and suggestions for future research.