Relations among functional systems in behavior analysis

A Neurobiological-Behavioral Approach to Predicting and Influencing Private Events

The primary goals of behavior analysis are the prediction and influence of behavior. These goals are largely achieved through the identification of functional relations between behaviors and the stimulating environment. Behavior-behavior relations are insufficient to meet these goals. Although this environment-behavior approach has been highly successful when applied to public behaviors, extensions to private events have been limited. This article discusses technical and conceptual challenges to the study of private events. We introduce a neurobiological-behavioral approach which seeks to understand private behavior as environmentally controlled in part by private neurobiological stimuli. These stimuli may enter into functional relations with both public and private behaviors. The analysis builds upon several current approaches to private events, delineates private behaviors and private stimulation, and emphasizes the reciprocal interaction between the two. By doing so, this approach can improve treatment and assessment of behavior and advance understanding of concepts such as motivating operations. We then describe the array of stimulus functions that neurobiological stimuli may acquire, including eliciting, discriminative, motivating, reinforcing, and punishing effects, and describe how the overall approach expands the concept of contextual influence. Finally, we describe how advances in behavioral neuroscience that enable the measurement and analysis of private behaviors and stimuli are allowing these once private events to affect the public world. Applications in the area of human-computer interfaces are discussed.

The Whole and the Parts—A New Perspective on Production Diseases and Economic Sustainability in Dairy Farming

The levels of production diseases (PD) and the cow replacement rate are high in dairy farming. They indicate excessive production demands on the cow and a poor state of animal welfare. This is the subject of increasing public debate. The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of production diseases on the economic sustainability of dairy farms. The contributions of individual culled cows to the farm’s economic performance were calculated, based on milk recording and accounting data from 32 farms in Germany. Cows were identified as ‘profit cows’ when they reached their individual ‘break-even point’. Data from milk recordings (yield and indicators for PD) were used to cluster farms by means of a principal component and a cluster analysis. The analysis revealed five clusters of farms. The average proportion of profit cows was 57.5%, 55.6%, 44.1%, 29.4% and 19.5%. Clusters characterized by a high proportion of cows with metabolic problems and high culling and mortality rates had lower proportions of profit cows, somewhat irrespective of the average milk-yield per cow. Changing the perception of PD from considering it as collateral damage to a threat to the farms’ economic viability might foster change processes to reduce production diseases.

The non-Darwinian evolution of behavers and behaviors

Many readers of this journal have been schooled in both Darwinian evolution and Skinnerian psychology, which have in common the vision of powerful control of their subjects by their sequalae. Individuals of species that generate more successful offspring come to dominate their habitat; responses of those individuals that generate more reinforcers come to dominate the repertoire of the individual in that context. This is unarguable. What is questionable is how large a role these forces of selection play in the larger landscape of existing organisms and the repertoires of their individuals. Here it is argued that non-Darwinian and non-Skinnerian selection play much larger roles in both than the reader may appreciate. The argument is based on the history of, and recent advances in, microbiology. Lessons from that history re-illuminate the three putative domains of selection by consequences: The evolution of species, response repertoires, and cultures. It is argued that before, beneath, and after the cosmically brief but crucial epoch of Darwinian evolution that shaped creatures such as ourselves, non-Darwinian forces pervade all three domains.

Who, What, and When: Skinner's Critiques of Neuroscience and His Main Targets

Skinner is commonly accused of being against neurophysiological explanations of behavior. However, in his writings, he did not criticize neuroscience itself as an important independent field from behavior analysis. The problem was in how some authors were using a pseudo-physiology in the explanation of behavior. Skinner was explicit in showing which authors and theories were using physiology incorrectly. Therefore, my goal is to present an analysis of the main targets of Skinner's critiques against neurophysiological explanations of behavior. This analysis will be divided as follows: (a) the targets of Skinner's critiques, (b) when the critiques were presented, and (c) the specific critiques that were made. The analysis was based upon 73 papers written by Skinner that were selected through keywords related to the issue. When placed in proper historical context, Skinner did not criticize neuroscience, but the misuse of pseudo-physiological theories in the explanation of behavior.

How Hume's Philosophy Informed Radical Behaviorism

The present paper analyzes consistencies between the philosophical systems of David Hume and B. F. Skinner, focusing on their conceptualization of causality and attitudes about scientific behavior. The ideas that Hume initially advanced were further developed in Skinner's writings and shaped the behavior-analytic approach to scientific behavior. Tracing Skinner's logical antecedents allows for additional historical and philosophical clarity when examining the development of radical behaviorism.

A New Frontier: Integrating Behavioral and Digital Technology to Promote Health Behavior

Modifiable behavioral risk factors such as cigarette smoking, physical inactivity, and obesity contribute to over 40 % of premature deaths in the USA. Advances in digital and information technology are creating unprecedented opportunities for behavior analysts to assess and modify these risk factors. Technological advances include mobile devices, wearable sensors, biomarker detectors, and real-time access to therapeutic support via information technology. Integrating these advances with behavioral technology in the form of conceptually systematic principles and procedures could usher in a new generation of effective and scalable behavioral interventions targeting health behavior. In this selective review of the literature, we discuss how technological tools can assess and modify a range of antecedents and consequences of healthy and unhealthy behavior. We also describe practical, methodological, and conceptual advantages for behavior analysts that stem from the use of technology to assess and treat health behavior.

Behaviorism, private events, and the molar view of behavior

Viewing the science of behavior (behavior analysis) to be a natural science, radical behaviorism rejects any form of dualism, including subjective-objective or inner-outer dualism. Yet radical behaviorists often claim that treating private events as covert behavior and internal stimuli is necessary and important to behavior analysis. To the contrary, this paper argues that, compared with the rejection of dualism, private events constitute a trivial idea and are irrelevant to accounts of behavior. Viewed in the framework of evolutionary theory or for any practical purpose, behavior is commerce with the environment. By its very nature, behavior is extended in time. The temptation to posit private events arises when an activity is viewed in too small a time frame, obscuring what the activity does. When activities are viewed in an appropriately extended time frame, private events become irrelevant to the account. This insight provides the answer to many philosophical questions about thinking, sensing, and feeling. Confusion about private events arises in large part from failure to appreciate fully the radical implications of replacing mentalistic ideas about language with the concept of verbal behavior. Like other operant behavior, verbal behavior involves no agent and no hidden causes; like all natural events, it is caused by other natural events. In a science of behavior grounded in evolutionary theory, the same set of principles applies to verbal and nonverbal behavior and to human and nonhuman organisms.

Monetary-based consequences for drug abstinence: methods of implementation and some considerations about the allocation of finances in substance abusers

Conceptualizing drug abuse within the framework of behavioral theories of choice highlights the relevance of environmental variables in shifting behavior away from drug-related purchases. Choosing to use drugs results in immediate and certain consequences (e.g., drug high and relief from withdrawal), whereas choosing abstinence typically results in delayed, and often uncertain, consequences (e.g., improved health, interpersonal relationships, money).

METHODS

This is a selective review of the literature on Contingency management (CM).

RESULTS

We highlight a variety of methods to deliver CM in practical, effective, and sustainable ways. We consider a number of parameters that are critical to the success of monetary-based CM, and the role of the context in influencing CM's effects. To illustrate the broad range of applications of CM, we also review different methods for arranging contingencies to promote abstinence and other relevant behavior. Finally, we discuss some considerations about how drug-dependent individuals allocate their finances in the context of CM interventions.

CONCLUSIONS

Contingency management (CM) increases choice for drug abstinence via the availability of immediate, financial-based gains, contingent on objective evidence of abstinence.

Joseph v. Brady: synthesis reunites what analysis has divided

Joseph V. Brady (1922-2011) created behavior-analytic neuroscience and the analytic framework for understanding how the external and internal neurobiological environments and mechanisms interact. Brady's approach offered synthesis as well as analysis. He embraced Findley's approach to constructing multioperant behavioral repertoires that found their way into designing environments for astronauts as well as studying drug effects on human social behavior in microenvironments. Brady created translational neurobehavioral science before such a concept existed. One of his most lasting contributions was developing a framework for ethical decision making to protect the rights of the people who participate in scientific research.

A case study in the misrepresentation of applied behavior analysis in autism: the gernsbacher lectures

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabrics of their life. (Tolstoy, 1894)This article presents a case study in the misrepresentation of applied behavior analysis for autism based on Morton Ann Gernsbacher's presentation of a lecture titled "The Science of Autism: Beyond the Myths and Misconceptions." Her misrepresentations involve the characterization of applied behavior analysis, descriptions of practice guidelines, reviews of the treatment literature, presentations of the clinical trials research, and conclusions about those trials (e.g., children's improvements are due to development, not applied behavior analysis). The article also reviews applied behavior analysis' professional endorsements and research support, and addresses issues in professional conduct. It ends by noting the deleterious effects that misrepresenting any research on autism (e.g., biological, developmental, behavioral) have on our understanding and treating it in a transdisciplinary context.

The generality of nicotine as a reinforcer enhancer in rats: effects on responding maintained by primary and conditioned reinforcers and resistance to extinction

RATIONALE

Nicotine may enhance the reinforcing value of other reinforcers. It is unclear whether nicotine enhances responding maintained by all reinforcers or whether there are limits to this role.

OBJECTIVE

The objective of the study is to test the generality of nicotine-induced increases in reinforced responding by using an observing response procedure, which generated measures of responding maintained by food reinforcers, conditioned reinforcers, and responding during extinction. We also examined whether nicotine increased resistance to extinction and whether nicotine's effects could be characterized as rate-dependent.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Rats received presession subcutaneous injections of Vehicle (n=5), 0.3 (n=6), or 0.56 (n=6) mg/kg nicotine for 70 sessions. Resistance to extinction was also assessed by removing food for five sessions.

RESULTS

Nicotine did not consistently affect food or extinction responding. Both doses of nicotine produced increases in responding maintained by conditioned reinforcers, but did not increase resistance to extinction. Predrug response rates accounted for a small but significant percentage of the variance in the drug effect.

CONCLUSION

Although there was a tendency for nicotine to increase low predrug response rates (i.e., response rates just prior to nicotine administration), 0.3 and 0.56 mg/kg nicotine systematically increased responding maintained by conditioned reinforcers. The results are consistent with a reinforcer-enhancing role of nicotine. However, nicotine did not increase resistance to extinction, nor did it increase food-maintained responses. Nicotine may selectively increase responding maintained by moderately reinforcing stimuli, such as the conditioned reinforcers used in the present study.

Self-awareness: behavior analysis and neuroscience

Self-awareness is a specific type of autoclitic discriminative behavior and inferential generalization to similar performances exhibited by other people. Brain imaging findings take on special importance within behavior analysis when they indicate that dysfunctions in these areas are related to differential effects of our interventions, with some acquiring substantially typical self-awareness skills and others failing to do so. It appears that those individuals whose brain dysfunctions are limited to these areas, and are not part of more generalized brain abnormalities, are amenable to substantial acquisition of those most basic of human skills called self-awareness, whereas individuals with more generalized brain dysfunction are not so disposed. Through a combination of less or more effective teaching contingencies during childhood, and degrees of dysfunction of those brain structures, some children grow up lacking self-reflective abilities and self-insight, whereas others are extraordinarily astute at those capacities. Among children with autism spectrum disorders who lack those skills due to abnormal brain development, approximately half of them can acquire those skills, at least to some degree through the use of effective, intensive, early behavior therapy methods.

Functional Analysis of the Early Development of Self-Injurious Behavior: Incorporating Gene–Environment Interactions

The analysis of the early development of self-injurious behavior (SIB) has, to date, reflected the wider distinction between nature and nurture. Despite the status of genetic factors as risk markers for the later development of SIB, a model that accounts for their influence on early behavior–environment relations is lacking. In the current paper we argue that the investigation of gene–environment interactions (GxE) and other forms of gene–environment interplay could potentially enhance current approaches to the study of self-injury. A conceptual model of the early development of SIB based explicitly on such relations is presented. The model is consistent with the basic tenets of functional analysis. Implications for research and the assessment, treatment, and prevention of SIB are discussed.

Perspectives on pain and intellectual disability

Historically, individuals with intellectual disability (ID) have been excluded from pain research and assumed to be insensitive or indifferent to pain. The weight of the evidence suggests that individuals with ID have been subject to practices and procedures with little regard for their ability to experience or express pain. A number of issues central to improving understanding of pain in ID will be introduced and current research related to the definition of pain and its social context, underlying sensory and metabolic systems and factors influencing judgments about the ability to experience pain will be reviewed. Accumulating evidence from interdisciplinary research designed to improve assessment, understand individual differences, and evaluate bias and beliefs about pain suggests that new perspectives are emerging and beginning to shape an innovative frontier of research that will ultimately pay tremendous dividends for improving the quality of life of individuals with ID.

The Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior at zero, fifty, and one hundred

The experimental content areas represented in JEAB in its first volume (1958) and 50 years later in Volume 87 are in many ways similar with regard to research on schedules of reinforcement, research with human subjects, and several other topics. Experimental analysis has not been displaced by quantitative analysis. Much less research on aversive control has been published in recent than in earlier years. Wishes for progress in the next 50 years include experiments on verbal behavior, the sources of novel behavior, and observing responses based on stimuli correlated with escape or avoidance.

Increased breakpoints on a progressive ratio schedule reinforced by IV cocaine are associated with reduced locomotor activation and reduced dopamine efflux in nucleus accumbens shell in rats

RATIONALE

It has been hypothesized that sensitization of the neurochemical effects within the mesolimbic dopamine (DA) system might account for specific aspects of the addiction process. We have recently developed a self-administration procedure which produces increases in responding reinforced by cocaine on a progressive ratio (PR) schedule. This may reflect an increased motivation to self-administer cocaine, one hallmark of addiction.

OBJECTIVES

The goal of this experiment was to investigate behavioral and neurochemical changes associated with increased cocaine self-administration on a PR schedule.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Rats self-administered cocaine over 14 days under a PR schedule. Cocaine-stimulated locomotor activity was evaluated before as well as 1 or 14 days after self-administration training. Cocaine-induced DA changes in the core and shell of the nucleus accumbens in the same animals were also examined.

RESULTS

Subjects showed increased responding over time, to about 200% of baseline. Cocaine-induced locomotor activation was decreased at both withdrawal times compared to naïve animals. Microdialysis showed no differences after self-administration in the nucleus accumbens core dopamine response at either time point. There was, however, a significant decrease in the dopamine response to cocaine in the shell of the nucleus accumbens.

CONCLUSION

The present results demonstrate that a progressive increase in breakpoints on a PR schedule can be established in rats at a time when the ability of cocaine to increase extracellular DA levels and stimulate locomotor activity is reduced. Therefore, sensitization of the mesolimbic DA system does not account for the observed change in drug-taking behavior.