The Measurement of Behavior: Linchpin to Progress in Behavioral and BioBehavioral Research

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The Measurement of Behavior Linchpin to Progress
in Behavioral and Bio-Behavioral Research

• Steven F. Warren, Ph.D.
• Institute for Life Span Sciences
• University of Kansas
• March 15, 2007

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Presentation Outline

• The central role of measurement in scientific
  advancement
• The measurement of human behavior good news, bad
  news, good news
• The measurement of animal behavior good news,
  bad news, etc
• Prospects for our bio-behavioral future

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The Fundamental Role of Measurement in Science

• Measurement capabilities shape research and
  determine what discoveries are made
• Some old examples of measurement breakthroughs
  the telescope, the microscope.
• Some recent examples the gene chip, brain
  imaging technologies.

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Rapid scientific advances typically follow
breakthroughs in measurement technologies
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Some Good News

• Breakthroughs in genetics and neuroscience are
  making behavioral research MORE important.
• Genetic/biological factors account for only a
  fraction of the variance in human behavor.
• The emergence of the new fields of behavioral
  genetics and the behavioral and cognitive
  neurosciences reflect this

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Some Bad News

• Measuring human behavior is generally
  labor-intensive, tedious, and expensive
• Progress in behavioral science has been slowed by
  the lack of advances in measurement while just
  the opposite has occurred in the biological
  sciences

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Some More Good News

• Things are changing in the behavioral sciences!

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LENA

• The worlds first automatic natural language
  analysis system
• A transformational behavioral measurement
  technology
• The door to a new generation of behavioral and
  bio-behavioral research

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What LENA does

• Captures every utterance between parent and child
• Measures adult-child turntaking
• Can count and analyze up to 20,000 words in a day
• Compares adult-child samples to a database of
  18,000 hours of adult-child interaction (and
  growing)

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LENA Technical Accomplishments

• Uses advanced speech recognition technology and
  algorithims
• Mean per hour error rate in of 2.4 compared to
  human transcribers
• Discerns near and far speech, filters out child
  crying/vegatative sounds as well as TV and radio

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Some questions for LENA

• What are the cumulative effects of language
  rich/poor environments?
• How does the richness of the environment
  interact with various disorders or genetic
  propensities cumulatively to impact development?
• How easily can environments be enriched/modified?
  
• And on, and on, and on.

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Other examples

• Measuring consumer behavior via the web.
  (Measuring behavior has become a big business).
• The convergence of global positioning,
  biosensors, and wireless technologies
• Measuring growth instantly and changing
  intervention goals accordingly

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The Brave New World Concern

• Our increasing ability to measure human behavior
  may lay the foundation for scientific
  breakthroughs, but.
• It also raises concerns about violations of
  various civil rights.
• How will IRBs constrain or shape what can be
  done with these technologies?

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The measurement of animal behavior

• The Good News Advances in knock-out and
  transgenic technologies have made the measurement
  of behavior a central concern for many
  biolological scientists
• The Bad News Most biological scientists have
  little knowledge and even less training in how to
  measure behavior.

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Possible Solutions

• Add behavioral training to the pedagogy of
  biologist
• Train and support a relatively small number of
  biobehavioral measurement specialists to help
  biologists design and use appropriate behavioral
  measures

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A Good News Outcome

• Knowledge of the effects of genetic manipulations
  increases more rapidly due to the infusion of
  behavioral measurement expertise

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Prospects for Bio-behavioral Science

• Advances in genetics and neuroscience have made
  behavioral science more important, not less
• Advances in behavioral measurement may
  revolutionize behavioral science
• Convergence of behavioral and biological
  measurements will accelerate bio-behavioral
  science

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No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the
stars or sailed to an uncharted land or opened a
new heaven to the human spirit. Helen Keller