Association for Behavior Analysis International

In the vast majority of operant experiments reinforcement magnitude (e.g., meal size) has been treated as a parameter of other independent variables that control the subject's behavior (e.g., the delivery of three food-pellets as reinforcement). By contrast, in some experiments conducted in our laboratory, we have focused on reinforcement magnitude (i.e., the number of response-produced food pellets) as the dependent variable of this type of experiment. In a first study, the rat's "natural" durations of an opportunity to eat and successive inter-opportunity periods were both altered. Shortening the feeding opportunities and lengthening the inter-opportunity periods increased the rate of eating. In a second study, the temporal location of a short neutral stimulus within the inter-opportunity period was varied. Food eaten was a decreasing function of lengthening the stimulus-opportunity interval, including either, the enhancement or suppression of eating about a baseline with no stimulus. In a third experiment, the effects of reinforcement delay in a food-accumulation situation were studied. Food accumulation (and consumption) increased as delay of reinforcement was lengthened. The general conclusion of our experiments is that independent variables commonly studied in conditioning experiments have considerable influence on the magnitude of eating by rats.

Behavior analysts interested in conditioning.

We do not risk damnation when we espouse behavior analysis, as Copernicus did when he removed humanity from the center of the world. Yet, many still characterize behavior analysis as too simple, too dangerous and quite unacceptable. They reacted that way when Watson first espoused a behavioral approach 100 years ago, and they were not kinder to Skinner when he proposed a more all-encompassing approach to psychology while keeping true to the behavioral way. This paper will make an attempt to explain why behaviorism continues to elicit emotional responses from scientists and the public at large rather than the studied reaction that science is expected to elicit.

Psychologists, behavior analysts, graduate students and anyone interested in behaviorism.

Several studies have confirmed that stimulus equivalence is a promising behavioral model of symbolic behavior. Behavioral, psychometric, and electrophysiological studies indicate that members of equivalence classes share meaning. Some of these studies formed equivalence classes comprising abstract and meaningful stimuli and showed that meaning transferred to the abstract stimuli. There are indications that this transfer varies quantitatively as a function of parameters such as nodal distance, amount of matching to sample training and matching delay. This has suggested that equivalent stimuli may vary in their degree of relatedness, which is incompatible with the very notion of equivalence. This presentation will discuss these strengths and threats involved in the notion of equivalence and eventual interpretative alternatives.

Anyone who is interested in symbolic behavior.

We have a greater understanding of the experiential sources for the social and language deficits in children with autism. Moreover, we know more about what to do to improve their social and verbal prognosis. These advances in the science of behavior are based on converging basic and applied research findings on: (a) emergent behavior (i.e., learned responses that emerge indirectly from directly teaching other operants or respondents), (b) verbal behavior and verbal behavior development, as well as (c) applications in schools with more than 300 children. One set of findings concerns how a single stimulus comes to control different verbal behaviors and how a single response comes to be useful for different functions. Still others show how children come to learn language incidentally (i.e., without direct or indirect instruction). Still other findings identify the role of conditioned reinforcement underlying language as a social tool and social reinforcer. These findings, and extensive replications with children, provide new and advanced expertise to bring children's verbal behavior under the natural reinforcers for language functions. The reinforcers for verbal behavior are the keys to what makes language social, and vice versa-these reinforcers are learned. We have identified many key learned reinforcers and how they are learned incidentally. Better yet, we now have protocols to condition them if they are missing in a child's reinforcement repertoire. True verbal and social behaviors accrue from changes in reinforcers for language.

Anyone interested in experiential sources for the social and language deficits in children with autism.

This presentation suggests that Israel Goldiamond's constructional approach can contribute to improvements in behavioral systems with profound social impact. The emphasis will be on contributions constructional behavioral systems analysis (BSA) can bring to understanding the dynamics of violence, and to supporting human rights through the construction of peaceful communities and social structures. (Similar analyses may be valuable in areas like achieving sustainable lifestyles, or constructing effective justice and policing systems.) Examples analyzed for current or potential contributions from constructional BSA will include: initiating and sustaining cultures of recognition and respect in schools; community action to construct peaceful neighborhoods in Chicago, IL, and North Charleston, S.C.; construction of cross-national cultures of youth activism for peace with the American Friends Service Committee; implementation of communitarian policing in Colombia; and sustainment of unity and nonviolent discipline in self-liberation movements globally. Some of these examples have explicitly incorporated BSA; others are well enough documented that probable systems dynamics can be extracted for further rigorous exploration. Both successes and struggles offer data that can contribute to our understanding of BSA, and crucially to campaigns for liberation from violence. Analytic tools from the author's recent book, Strategic Nonviolent Power, will be used throughout.

Psychologists, behavior analysts, graduate students, and anyone interested in contributions from constructional behavioral systems analysis.

Cultural practices are maintained by social contingencies that prevail in a given society, group, or organization. They may be in vigor for variable lengths of time, from some months, as in fashion, to some centuries, as contingencies that are part of the identity of ethnic groups. Most human operant behavior may come under the classification of cultural practices. Even behaviors common to all humans, like eating, are linked to social contingencies that determine what and how to eat. Such behaviors are acquired by newcomers to any given group, either a child or a stranger, by learning processes that may involve modeling, rules, and/or direct exposure to the contingencies. So contingencies, more than behaviors or consequences, are better to characterize any event as cultural.

Anyone interested in cultural contingencies.

Behavior analysts generally recognize that the operation of behavioral principles in the everyday world is constrained by the biology of behaving organisms and, in the case of humans, by the particulars of the cultural environment in which behavior occurs. In this paper, we distinguish between process and content in behavioral and cultural domains. We explore the constraints on behavior imposed by culture, conceived here as that part of the environment constructed by multiple people over extended time periods. It is suggested that "cultural practices" is not a technical term in a behavior analytic analysis of cultures, but rather is an everyday term used for a multiplicity of phenomena. The phenomena commonly called "cultural practices" are examined as products of various combinations of behavioral and cultural level contingencies of selection.

In contrast to many social sciences, behavior analysis offers a technical conceptual framework that is generic in the sense that it is valid in different contexts and for a variety of organisms. The selectionist perspective adds value to the analysis of behavior at different levels of complexity. The systems' perspective extends the scale and scope for behavior analysis to explain such phenomena as emergent behavior, self-organizing behavioral systems and the consequences of cultural cusps. The complex (functional) relations between behaviors and systems contingencies might be relevant when exploring both cultural selection and the selection of cultures.

Collective violence (war, terrorism, violent political conflicts, genocide, repression, organized criminal activity, disappearances, torture, and a range of other abuses of human rights) killed at least 200 million people, and injured an incalculable number during the 20th century. The problem clearly continues into the present in many parts of the world, and offers a rich field for exploring the dynamics of cultural systems. This paper explores the roots of such violence from the perspective of the natural science of behavior, which in combination with historical observation at least suggests potential approaches for understanding and challenging patterns of violence perpetrated among interlocking cultural entities and populations. Examples explored here will be drawn from post-colonial states, in which the dynamics of collective violence can be particularly challenging. The analyses that will be presented suggest that policy makers and communities often rely on politically manipulated strategies that are inherently weak or counterproductive. Constructional options (as sketched here and developed in detail in the authors recent book Strategic Nonviolent Power) offer alternatives drawing on recent advances in the selectionist analysis of cultural practices, networks of interlocking behavioral contingencies, and metacontingencies within behavioral systems. Behavioral systems/cultural analysts face enormous challenges and opportunities in this work, meriting the commitment of substantial scientific resources.

Typically, undergraduate psychology majors have difficulties writing complete and accurate descriptions of information presented in graphs that depict the interactive effects of two variables on behavior. Training visual-visual conditional discriminations between graphs and written descriptions did not improve the written descriptions of graphs. The graphs and corresponding textual descriptions have many elements that must be attended to if they are to influence writing behavior. Traditional conditional discrimination training does not require attention to all of those pictorial and textual elements. Training of conditional discriminations designed to ensure attention to all features of the graphs and printed text resulted in dramatic improvements in the written descriptions of these complex graphs. The establishment of joint stimulus control by all elements of graphs and their corresponding printed texts (a selection-based repertoire) induced accurate written descriptions of complex graphs (a production-based repertoire). Thus, students learned to write without writing.

The presentation will be of interest to those who are also interested in equivalence class formation, stimulus control, and behavioral implications for education, and secondarily, relational frame research.