hToday, after so many articles on behaviorism and behavioral analysis, we will do something that we have practically not done: attempt an introduction to the operations and basic terminology of behavioral analysis. Yes, we usually start things anywhere.
If you are already familiar with the field, you can skip this reading (I beg you in fact, so criticize the thousands of mistakes I am about to make), but if not, it may be as good a way as any to take your first steps in the topic.
Let’s start from scratch.
Suppose we want to become researchers, to learn a little more about how living beings behave — be they complex animals like dolphins, lions, mice, or others like slugs, insects, or reggaeton singers — with the goal of understanding a little. more what they do. That is, we are interested in behavior in general. And since we are interested in behavior in general, even if it is that of an insect, a fish, or a human being, we will talk about the behavior of organisms to include any being that can have behaviors.
In this scenario, there are several paths we could follow to understand the behavior of an organism.
First, we could observe the behavior when it happens naturally. We can see, for example, what our cat does, how it interacts with the world. Thus I observe, for example, that he lies down on the couch in the morning, and that in the afternoon he sleeps in bed.
Unfortunately, we notice that this does not get us very far in terms of understanding. We can formulate some hypotheses, but if we do not have control over what happens and cannot intervene, we will not gain much understanding of their behaviors. Maybe the cat changes its sleeping place depending on how the temperature in the house varies, maybe it does so by looking for the quietest place, there is no way to know for sure. If we want to know a little more we have to go one step further and intervene; In other words, we can modify something in the environment to see what happens to behavior.
This will then be the central methodology of research and intervention in the behavioral disciplines: we will organize the environment in certain ways to observe the effect that this has on behavior.
he behaviorism It will be philosophy, while behavioral analysis will be the discipline with which we will investigate behavior, that is, our science of behavior.
Since we are trying to analyze particular behaviors, we can call this discipline behavior analysisand call behavioral analyst to the person who is trying to understand the behavior with that methodology. In contrast, we can call behaviorist to those who think and reflect on conduct and methodology in general, philosophically, while behavioral analyst will be the one who actively investigates (experimentally or in applied real-world situations) on particular behaviors. So he behaviorism It will be philosophy, while behavioral analysis will be the discipline with which we will investigate behavior, that is, our science of behavior.
Returning to our example of investigating our cat’s behavior, we can call procedures or operations the act of organizing the environment, and we can call the results of that organization of the environment processes, which is why we usually talk about procedures and processes in psychotherapy: The first are the ways of organizing the environment (whether it is a psychotherapeutic intervention, or the arrangement of a research apparatus such as a Skinner box), while the second are the results that we observe in an organism.
Observe the behavior
As we mentioned, the first thing we can do is observe the behavior. In a way, a good part (but not all) of the discipline we call Ethology deals with this: the observation of the behavior of organisms in their natural environment, trying not to intervene too much. The ethology observes the behavioral habits of various species, looking for regularities and patterns, usually in their environment and observing their natural interactions.
For example, in this video we can see how a group of researchers used a fake penguin to approach a group of penguins to observe their behavior with minimal disturbance (although presumably seeing a penguin with wheels must have caused considerable confusion in its conspecifics ).
Although mere observation of behavior will provide us with a lot of information about how an organism behaves, it will not get us very far with respect to why it behaves that way, that is, it will not fully help us understand the behavior, its causes and possible modifications. We are limited to observing what will happen to the penguin, and let’s agree that sometimes nothing much happens to a penguin.
Instead of trying to modify the organism or see what it is like inside, it is about modifying the environment and seeing what happens with its behavior.
If we want to know a little more, we can intervene in the situation in some way. There’s no point in trying to directly modify the behavior — I can move the cat from the bed to the couch, but a) it will probably resist and come back, and b) I won’t be understanding much about why the cat sleeps on the couch or in the bed. It also won’t help me much if I just do various imaging studies on the cat (X-rays, EEGs, fMRI, etc.), since that will only tell me, let’s say, what my cat is like inside, his structure, while we are interested in what it does (and how to get it to stop doing it in some cases). Our structure probably looks like this: What we can do in addition to observing to understand behavior, instead of trying to modify the organism or see what it is like Inside, it is to modify the environment and see what happens with your behavior. And here we find two options to proceed: we can present stimuli, or we can organize consequences.
Present stimuli
Introducing stimuli is pretty self-explanatory: I introduce a stimulus into the environment of the organism I want to study and see what happens. This is also something ethologists often do: introduce some stimulus and see how they respond. The well-known experiment of ethologists Lorenz and Tinberger is a good example of stimulus presentation. They cut out a cardboard silhouette, which depending on the direction in which it moves resembles a hawk or a goose, and they made it appear as if it were a bird flying over a group of young turkeys. When they made it pass to the left (looking like a goose), the turkeys did not flinch. When they made her pass to the right (looking like a hawk), they ran away. From here we can assume that there is some relationship between the characteristics of the stimulus and the behavior of these turkeys. We already know something more than we could know by mere observation.
In behavioral analysis, when a behavior is caused directly by a stimulus we call the eliciting stimulus and we say that the behavior is elicited. The behaviors elicited by a stimulus are usually quite compelling and difficult for the organism to control, which is why they are often popularly called “reflexes” (although the term has more precise uses). When the doctor hits them on the knee with his rubber hammer, it is almost impossible to avoid lifting the leg, for example.
So, the first thing we can do to understand the behavior a little more is to present stimuli and observe what happens with the behaviors.
Organize consequences
In addition to presenting stimuli, we can also do something much more sophisticated: we can organize the environment in such a way that consequences occur due to certain actions of the organism.
For example, we can put a mouse in a cardboard maze in which there is cheese at the exit; Or we can even make the experiment more complex and design two exits for the maze: in one there is cheese and in the other there is a plate that administers a mild electric shock, and see in repeated trials what the mouse tends to do.
What is reinforced or punished is the behavior, never the organism itself. The cheese at the end of the maze reinforces the behavior of looking for the exit, not the mouse.
Thorndike’s well-known experiments were consequence organizations of this type. Thorndike designed a series of cages in which a cat could leave only if he performed certain actions.
Thorndike noticed that at first the cat took some time to find the exit, but with successive presentations the cat came out more and more quickly: the effect of its behaviors tended to influence its future behaviors.
When we organize consequences, we can notice that consequences generally have two effects on behavior. Some consequences cause certain behavior to continue to occur, or to occur more often than before; while other consequences cause certain behavior to stop being emitted or to be emitted less. In the first case we will talk about a reinforcement operation, and we will say that behavior X has been reinforced by its consequence. In the second case we will talk about a punishment operation and we will say that the behavior has been punished for its consequence.
Let’s notice two things: what is reinforced or punished is the behavior, never the organism itself. The cheese at the end of the maze reinforces the behavior of looking for the exit, not the mouse. Secondly, let us note that we do not know what effect a consequence that we have set will have until we observe its effect on the behavior, which is why a priori we cannot be sure if a given consequence will have a reinforcing or punishing effect, but rather that we know only once those consequences have happened.
Reinforcement and punishment are not intrinsic properties of stimuli, but the relationship between the effects of a certain stimulus and a certain behavior, and we can also call this relationship the function.
This usually leads to confusion. A consequence may function as reinforcement for one organism and not for another, or it may even function as reinforcement at one time and as punishment at another (the beer flavor consequence may reinforce drinking beer on a Saturday night, and punish the drink beer on Sunday morning when we are hungover). Reinforcement and punishment are not intrinsic properties of stimuli, but the relationship between the effects of a certain stimulus and a certain behavior, and we can also call this relationship the function. proposes to use the term consequence for the operation of administering consequences, and proposes that we only talk about reinforcement or punishment according to the effects on the behavior of those consequences, but although this term would resolve several confusions, it is not usually used.
So, so far we have some resources to understand the behavior:
Observe the behavior
Present stimuli
Organize consequences
But we can still make the situation more complex and thus improve our understanding of what is happening.
Point
If we observe the world we can notice that both the presentation of stimuli and the presentation of consequences are usually pointed out by others…