New Developments in Behavioral Research: Theory, Method and Application

In Honor of Sidney W. Bijou

Barbara C. Etzel, Judith M. LeBlanc, Donald M. Baer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000089677
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Originally published in 1977, these examples of research and scholarly argument were collected in honor of Professor Sidney W. Bijou. In the language of academics, they constitute a Festschrift: a festival of scholarly writing, performed to celebrate the career of a person who produced, and stimulated others to produce, exactly such contributions throughout a long, valuable, and productive professional history. Since 1955, Dr Bijou had worked almost exclusively within the approach variously labelled as the functional analysis of behavior, the experimental analysis of behavior, operant conditioning, or Skinnerian psychology. From his point of view, it seems clear, the first of these labels was the correct one. It was the principle of objective, direct, observable analysis that attracted him.

Part I

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THEORY

Setting Events Due to Sidney W. Bijou

A Bibliography of Bijou’s Work in the Area of Theory, with Self-Evident Function for the Papers Published Here

Bijou, S. W. The problem of pseudo-feeblemindedness. Journal of Educational Psychology, 1939, 30, 519-526.

Bijou, S. W. & McCandless, B. R. An approach to a more comprehensive analysis of mentally retarded pre-delinquent boys. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 1944, 65, 147-160.

Bijou, S. W. Motivation in the academic learning of the retarded child. Exceptional Children, 1952, 19, 103.

Bijou, S. W. Learning in children. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 1959, 24, (5, Whole No. 74).

Bijou, S. W. & Baer, D. M. Child Development: A systematic and empirical theory (Vol. 1). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1961.

Bijou, S.W. Theory and research in mental (developmental) retardation. Psychological Record, 1963, 13, 95-110.

Bijou, S. W. An empirical concept of reinforcement and a functional analysis of child behavior. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 1964, 104, 215-223.

Bijou, S. W. & Baer, D. M. Child Development: Universal stage of infancy (Vol. 2). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1965.

Bijou, S.W. A functional analysis of retarded development. In N. R. Ellis (Ed.), International review of research in mental retardation (Vol. 1). Academic Press, 1966.

Bijou, S. W. Implications of behavioral science for counseling and guidance. In J. D. Krumboltz (Ed.), Revolution in counseling. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1966.

Bijou, S. W. Analyse experimentale general de l’apprentissage et du development. Enfant, 1967, 2, 178-192.

Bijou, S. W. Ages, stages, and the naturalization of human development. American Psychologist, 1968, 23(6), 419-427.

Bijou, S.W. Child behavior and development: A behavioral analysis. International Journal of Psychology, 1968, 3, 221-238.

Bijou, S. W. The mentally retarded child. Psychology Today, 1968, 2, 47-51.

Bijou, S.W. Modern meaning of instincts. In R. B. MacLeod (Ed.), William James: Unfinished business. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 1969. Pp. 31-35.

Bijou, S. W. Promoting optimum learning in children. In P. Wolf & R. MacKeith (Eds.), Planning for better learning. London: Spastics International Medical Publications, 1969. Pp. 58-67.

Bijou, S. W. Reinforcement history and socialization. In R. A. Hoppe, G. A. Milton, & E. C. Simmel (Eds.), Early experiences and the processes of socialization. New York: Academic Press, 1970. Pp. 43-58.

Bijou, S. W. What psychology has to offer education – Now. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1970, 3, 65-71.

Bijou, S. W. Environment and intelligence: A behavioral analysis. In R. Cancro (Ed.), Intelligence: Genetic and environmental influences. New York: Grune & Stratton, 1971. Pp. 211-239.

Bijou, S. W. The critical need for methodological consistency in field and laboratory studies. In F. J. Monks, W. W. Hartup, U. J. de Wit (Eds.), Determinants of behavioral development. New York: Academic Press, 1972. Pp. 89-113.

Bijou, S. W. Development in the preschool years: A functional analysis. American Psychologist, 1975, 50, 829-837.

Bijou, S.W. Moral development in the preschool years: A functional analysis. Mexican Journal of Behavior Analysis, 1975, 1, 11-29.

Bijou, S. W., & Redd, W. H. Behavior therapy for children. Handbook of American Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books, 1975.

Bijou, S. W. The basic stage of early childhood development. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976.

2

Operant Research in Violation of the Operant Paradigm?

Margret M. Baltes

Pennsylvania State University

Hayne W. Reese

West Virginia University

This chapter is addressed to the question of whether or not operant research conforms to the basic characteristics of the operant paradigm. First, these characteristics are briefly elaborated, showing that the operant paradigm implies an active organism and a reciprocal relation between behavior and environment. Next, the operant concepts of the active organism and reciprocal relation are analyzed and found to be consistent with the mechanistic world view. Finally, the characteristics of operant research are discussed, and are shown also to be consistent with the mechanistic world view. Consequently, there is no basic conflict between operant research and the operant paradigm. However, neither operant research nor the operant paradigm deals directly with active organisms and reciprocal interactions as conceptualized within the organismic world view. This conceptual dilemma extends to nonoperant mechanistic approaches dealing with dynamic organism-environment interactions, and is not limited to the operant approach.

THE OPERANT PARADIGM

Basic Characteristics

The term “paradigm” is used here to refer to a metatheoretical system or model that represents in symbolic form the interrelations among phenomena in a selected domain. The domain of the operant paradigm is behavior of organisms as it relates to environment. The details of the way in which this paradigm represents the behavior of organisms are important, but for the present purposes only the salient features of the paradigm need to be considered. The operant paradigm is functional, in contrast to structural (Catania, 1973), in that it emphasizes the relations between organism and environment. Environmental conditions do not elicit operant behavior in the all-or-none manner of reflex. Rather, environmental conditions simply make the behavior either more likely or less likely to occur. In this sense, operant behavior is probabilistic in relations to stimuli.

Unlike other S-R paradigms, the operant paradigm depicts the organism as not merely reacting to an environmental setting, but as possibly changing it via his reaction upon this setting. “While we are awake, we act upon the environment constantly” (Skinner, 1965, p. 66); “The characteristic of operant behavior is that it operates on the environment” (Hill, 1963, p. 61). According to the operant paradigm, in an appropriate context (S^D), a response (R) occurs and effects a change in the environment (S^R), which in turn may either change the probability of the response, via reinforcement or punishment, or change the nature of the response by changing the context (S^D). Thus, although the cycle of S^D-R-S^R can be repetitive, the stimuli and responses may change from cycle to cycle. There is, then, an interactive relation between behavior and environment. Each is both a source of change and a result of change, both a cause and an effect. The relation between behavior and environment is therefore a reciprocal relation. There is a “reciprocal relationship between the knower and the known” (Skinner, 1961, p. 543), and between the controller and the counter-controller (Skinner, 1971).

In the organismic world view, a reciprocal interaction implies an active organism (Overton & Reese, 1973). It has been explicitly argued that in the operant paradigm the organism is active (Bijou, 1971). Skinner (1971) argued that almost all living beings act to free themselves from harmful and aversive contacts (see also Herrnstein, 1969).

The active and dynamic interplay of organism and environment is less obvious and dramatic when one organism is behaving within a physical environmental setting than when two or more organisms are behaving in a social setting. As Skinner (1965) said, “schedules of reinforcement which adjust to rate of the behavior reinforced do not often occur in inorganic nature” (p. 301), but a social “reinforcing system is seldom independent of the behavior reinforced” (p. 300). That is, in a social reinforcing system each organism provides S^Ds and S^Rs for the responses of the other organism(s). Skinner referred to these reciprocal relationships as “social episodes.” Reynolds, Catania, and Skinner (1963) referred explicitly to such an episode as an “interaction.”

It appears, then, that the operant paradigm involves an active organism and an interactive relation between behavior and environment, each exerting changes in the other. The next task is to analyze the concepts of the active organism and the interactive relationship in the operant paradigm to determine what world view or metatheoretical model they are consistent with.

Reciprocal Interaction

The dictionary meaning of “interaction” is mutual action or reciprocal action. In science, these two meanings are retained, but one should note that the meanings are not synonymous. Mutual action, with reference to causes, means “interaction” in the analysis-of-variance sense, a “conjunctive plurality of causes,” which is a variety of simple efficient causation (Bunge, 1963). That is, the interaction refers to an interdependency of determinants, not an interaction between cause and effect but between causes. In other words, the determinacy is unidirectional. Unidirectional determinacy means that the direction of determinacy is one-way, from cause to effect. The one variable is active and the other is the recipient of the activity. The effect may, however, function as a cause of a further effect, forming a linear chain of cause-effect sequences. The linear chain may be diagrammed as circular, as in cybernetic feedback models, but linearity is preserved in that each event in the loop can be traced to an immediately preceding event in the loop. Each event is both a cause and an effect, but its character as an effect is not influenced by its character as a cause. Rather, its causal character is predetermined by its effected character. It may be useful to note that the circular diagram is reasonable only if time is ignored. If time is included in the diagram and is represented by a straight line, then the circular array becomes a rectilinear array in which the components are given time subscripts. (This point is apparently not always understood; see Powers’ 1973 reply to Reese, 1973.)

The determinacy in a “mutual action” of causes is also summative, because even though interaction means nonadditivity of treatment effects in the analysis of variance (Hays, 1963, pp. 389, 454), the interaction is an additive component of the total effect. Nonadditivity of treatment effects means that the joint effect of treatments is not the sum of their individual effects, but rather it is the sum of the individual effects plus a term reflecting a joint effect. Thus, Herrnstein adds an interaction component (mR_i) to the other components of the total frequency of reinforcement (1970, e.g., Equation 20, p. 259).

Reciprocal action means that one variable, the cause, produces an effect on another variable, the effect, which at the same time functions as a cause that produces an effect on the initial variable. The cause-effect relation between the variables is confounded by the cause-effect character of each variable. Each variable is “both the cause and the effect of the other. If a candle is lighted, the flame melts the paraffin; the molten paraffin, saturating the wick, aids the burning; and the burning, in turn, melts more paraffin; and so on” (Werkmeister, 1948, p. 635). There is an organismic or dialectic relation between the two variables, and the notions of unidirectional and summative determinacy are inapplicable.

It is a firmly established principle that genes interact with their environments and in some cases interact with each other as in polygenic inheritance. Regarding the interaction among genes, Dobzhansky (1955) has asserted that “Every gene may affect many visible traits; most traits are influenced by several or by many genes” (p. 37). However, Dobzhansky considered genetics to be a mechanistic science (pp. 19–21, 230, 358-363), and therefore the interaction among genes must be a mutual action, not a reciprocal action. With respect to the interaction between genes and environment, “every organism exists in an environment and at the expense of the environment to transform a part of it into their own copies” (p. 74). Thus, organisms must change the form of (part of) the environment in order to survive and reproduce. However, it seems clear that the interaction is again intended to be unidirectional and hence not to refer to reciprocal action.

The issue with respect to the operant paradigm is whether the organism-environment interaction is better represented by the burning candle or by the genetic model – by the interaction between flame and paraffin or by the interaction between genes and environment. If the former, it is a reciprocal interaction, implying a nonmechanistic world view (Overton & Reese, 1973). The problem is complicated, because in strong reciprocal interactions it is “impossible to distinguish in any meaningful way individual components” (Overton, 1973, p. 78), which means that “the action of subsystems within the total event cannot be analyzed in terms of one-way causality” and implies that “the interactions between components would preclude identification of the components themselves.” However, “Relatively short-term occurrences, well defined features, and traumatic events …might be analyzed under the convenient fiction that they are independent, i.e., weak interactions. To the extent this fiction is considered reasonable, the traditional experimental procedures and statistical techniques are appropriate” (Overton, 1973, pp. 86–87).

Reynolds et al (1963) used the term “interaction” in referring to the laboratory observatio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Introductory Note
• Celebrants
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I: Contributions to Theory
• Part II: Contributions to Methodology and Practice
• Part III: New Analyses of Behavior
• Part IV: Bijou as Subject
• Author Index
• Chapter Descriptors
• Volume Descriptors