The Experimental Analysis of Behavior

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Chapter 2

• The Experimental Analysis of Behavior

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• Functional Analysis
• Methods of analyzing behavior-environment
  relationships.
• Functions characteristic effect produced by
  either a behavioral or environmental event
• Response Functions - classifying behavior
• Stimulus Functions analyzing the environment
• A functional analysis of why a behavior occurred
  is analogous to reconstructing a crime scene to
  understand how and why the crime occurred

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• Behavior can be classified according to structure
  or function.
• Structural Approach behavior analyzed in terms
  of form.
• Piagets developmental stages
• Functional Approach what the behavior
  accomplishes.

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Structural Analysis

• There are two ways to classify the behavior of
  organisms structurally and functionally.
• In the structural approach, behavior is analyzed
  in terms of its form.
• Topography-the form of the behavior.
• For example, a child presses a light switch with
  the left hand, the thumb, and the index finger at
  a particular force.
• Therefore, the topography (structure) of the
  response is determined by the function of this
  behavior.
• Functionally, grasping the switch in a particular
  way produces light in an efficient manner.

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• Behavioral approach
• Structure and function are interrelated.
• Structure form or topography.
• Functional analysis behaviors produce specific
  consequences.

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Functional Analysis

• In a more complex example, the child who finds a
  hidden object, a functional analysis suggests
  that this behavior also produces some specific
  consequence-the child gets the hidden toy.
• Rather than infer some intellectual stage of
  development, the behavior analyst suggests that a
  particular history of reinforcement is
  responsible for the childs capability.
• A child that demonstrates object permanence has
  had numerous opportunities to search for and find
  missing objects. The child displays behaviors
  labeled as object permanence not because of some
  stage attained but because of experiences.

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• Most behaviors are actually composed of several
  discrete units that follow a specific stimulus
  and/or result in consequences.
• Response- integrated set of movements, or a
  performance, functionally related to
  environmental events.
• Respondent - behavior increased or decreased
  because of the presentation of a stimulus that
  precedes the response, elicited, reflexes (smooth
  muscles).
• Operant - emitted, spontaneously occurs at some
  frequency, strengthened or weakened by events
  that follow response, reinforcement, punishment.
• In response the same environmental event, cold
  temperatures for instance, humans would engage in
  a number of respondent and operant actions with
  the same function, keeping warm.
• Distinction not always clear cut.

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Two Basic Types of Behavior

• Respondent - behavior increased or decreased
  because of the presentation of a stimulus that
  precedes the response, elicited, reflexes (smooth
  muscles).
• Operant - emitted, spontaneously occurs at some
  frequency, strengthened or weakened by events
  that follow response, reinforcement, punishment.
• Human language and thought are operant behavior,
  some of which happens inside the skin. To
  distinguish as some do between the actions that
  are performed on the outside of a person as
  being behavior and the actions that are
  performed on the inside of a person as being
  psychological processes or mental activities
  is overly simplistic and unscientific. Thought
  and language conform to the principle of operant
  conditioning, therefore they are operant
  behavior.

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Response Classes
Response class - all the forms of behavior that
have similar function and are changed, via
reinforcement or punishment in a similar manner
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Response Functions

• There is a large class of behavior that does not
  depend on an eliciting stimulus.
• Some behavior is emitted and spontaneously occurs
  at some frequency.
• For example, infants randomly emit a pattern of
  vocal sounds usually referred to as babbling.

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Emitted Behavior

• English-speaking parents attend to babbling that
  sounds like English and the baby emits more and
  more English sounds. In Korea, Korean infants
  babble in all speech sounds but come to drop the
  f sound from their repertoire. The F sound
  drops out because such infants never hear, no
  such sound exists in the Korean language and
  Korean parents only give attention to speech
  sounds that are Korean-like. A cognitive
  psychologist would try to explain the dropped
  sounds as being due to the infants use of the
  rules of a language. The exact nature, structure,
  origin and location of such rules are never
  specified.
• When emitted behavior is strengthened or weakened
  by the events that follow the response, it is
  called, operant behavior.
• Thus, operants are emitted responses that
  increase or decrease depending on the
  consequences they produce.

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Emitted Behavior

• To make clear the distinction between emitted
  behavior and operants, consider the action word
  problem-solving versus the phrase solving the
  calculus problem.
• Problem-solving is emitted behavior, but it has
  no specified function, it has no subject. Humans
  do not set out to solve problems in general, we
  solve specific problems.
• Solving the calculus problem is an operant that
  is defined by getting the right answer.
• Pecking a disc is emitted behavior when there is
  no eliciting stimulus, but it is an operant when
  a bird pecks the disk for food.

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Response Classes

• Response class- all the forms of the performance
  that have a similar function (e.g., putting on a
  coat to keep warm as an operant, versus shivering
  and piloerection as a respondent).
• In some cases, the responses in a class have
  close physical resemblance, but this is not
  always the case.

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Stimulus Functions

• All events and stimuli, whether internal or
  external, may acquire the capacity to affect
  behavior.
• When the occurrence of an event changes the
  behavior of an organism, we may say that the
  event has a stimulus function.
• Drugs can change our behavior in complex ways
  because a given drug can serve multiple stimulus
  functions.

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Stimulus Functions

• Occurrence of an event such as a drug changes
  behavior via
• Conditioned stimulus functions
• Reinforcement function
• Discriminative function
• Discriminative stimuli.

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Stimulus Functions

• Both respondent and operant conditioning are ways
  to create stimulus functions
• During respondent conditioning, an arbitrary
  event like a tone comes to elicit a particular
  response like salivation. Once the tone is
  effective, it is said to have a conditioned
  stimulus function for salivation.
• In the absence of the conditioning history, the
  tone may have no specified function- it does not
  affect behavior.

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Stimulus Functions

• Operant conditioning may result in establishing
  or changing the functions of stimuli.
• Any stimulus (or event) that follows a response
  and increases that response has a reinforcement
  function.
• When an organisms behavior is reinforced, those
  events that reliably precede responses come to
  have a discriminative function.
• These events are said to set the occasion for
  behavior and are called discriminative stimuli.

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Perceiving as Behavior

• Perception as inferred, hypothetical constructs
  The Stroop effect cannot be due to (explained by)
  the Stroop effect. Many psychologists will offer
  a label for a phenomenon as an explanation for
  the same phenomenon. Attempting to explain the
  Stroop effect as being due to conflicting mental
  representations is unnecessarily complex.
• Perception as behavior Humans have much more
  experience with reading words than with naming
  the color in which a word is printed. Therefore
  the former response is a higher probability
  response, we can do it quickly and fluently. The
  latter response is rarely performed, it is a
  lower-probability of occurrence and as a result,
  we stammer and stutter and the higher-probability
  response gets in the way of the latter response.
  The Stroop effect is due to competition between
  responses with different probabilities of
  occurrence.

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Perceiving as Behavior

• Both stimuli and responses can compete or
  interfere with other respective stimuli or
  responses but it is hard to see how hypothetical
  constructs or different mental representations
  can compete with each other.

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Remembering as behavior
Cognitive psychologists will explain our ability
remember our pasts as being due to memory, a
matter of storage, retrieval, etc. Memory is
evidently stored in some unknown form, in some
unknown mechanism, in some unknown location and
retrieved by some unknown mechanism or agent, and
read back by the same unknown and then the
information is used by the person to remember.
An explanation should not immediately beg more
questions.
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Remembering as behavior
The behavior analyst explains remembering and
forgetting in simpler terms without immediately
raising more questions. Storage and retrieval,
failure to retrieve, etc., are replaced with
response probability. A response that has been
performed over and over will be remembered
easily because it is a high-probability
response. If such a response has not been
performed for some time, its probability of
occurrence will be lower, we will not remember
it well. A response we are just learning is by
definition a lower-probability response. We will
have a lower probability of being able to
remember it. When one adds the stimulus control
of antecedent stimuli, in the presence of which
responses have higher probability and in their
absence, a response has lower probability of
occurrence, remembering is accounted for without
begging questions. In the presence of the
antecedent, a response that has been performed
repeatedly due to reinforcement, is very likely
to be remembered. Alter the antecedent
stimulus, the frequency of response or its
reinforcement, remembering is much less likely.
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Stimulus Functions

• Discriminative stimuli acquire their function
  because they predict reinforcement.
• In the laboratory, a pigeon may peck a key for
  food when the key is illuminated, but pecking is
  not reinforced when the key is dark.
• After some time, the illuminated key sets the
  occasion for the response.

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Stimulus Functions

• The concept of stimulus function is an important
  development in the analysis of behavior.
• Humans and other animals have evolved in such a
  way that they can sense those aspects of the
  environment that have been important for
  survival.
• Of all the stimuli that can be physically
  measured and sensed by an organism, at any one
  moment, only some affect behavior (have a
  stimulus function).

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Stimulus Classes

• Stimuli that regulate operant and respondent
  behavior also vary from one time to the next.
• When stimuli vary across physical dimensions such
  as size, shape, loudness, brightness, accent of
  language or skin color but have a common effect
  on behavior, they are part of the same stimulus
  class.

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Classes of Reinforcing Stimuli

• Some consequences strengthen behavior when they
  are presented and others strengthen it when they
  are removed.
• Reinforcing stimuli can be divided into two
  subsets.
• Those events that are reinforcing when presented
  are positive reinforcers.
• Those events that are reinforcing when removed or
  terminated are known as negative reinforcers.

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Establishing Operations

• The relations between stimulus response classes
  depend on the broader context of behavior meaning
  environment-behavior relationships are always
  conditional-depending on other circumstances.
• Establishing operations- any environmental
  change.
• For example, the change increased the momentary
  effectiveness or reinforcement supporting operant
  behavior or the change increased momentarily the
  responses that had in the past produced such
  reinforcement.
• The most common establishing operation is
  deprivation for primary reinforcement.

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Establishing Operations

• One primary reinforcer is food.
• For example, an animal is withheld from food
  until it reaches 80 of its free-feeding body
  weight.
• First, food becomes an effective reinforcer for
  any operant that produces it. That is
  deprivation procedures establish the
  reinforcement function of food.
• Second, behavior that has previously resulted in
  getting food becomes more likely -in the wild, a
  bird may start to forage in places where it has
  previously found food.
• Sexual contact becomes more reinforcing after a
  period of deprivation. Following a period at sea,
  the lonely and eager sailor returns to places
  where he met previous sexual partners.

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Establishing Operations

• An establishing operation is defined as any
  change in the environment which alters the
  effectiveness of some object or event as
  reinforcement and simultaneously alters the
  momentary frequency of the behavior that has been
  followed by that reinforcement.

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Behavioral Research

• The condition that is changed by the experimenter
  is called the independent variable because it is
  free to vary at the discretion of the researcher.
• The measured effect in a experiment is called the
  dependent variable.

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Independent Variable

• What is changed in an experiment
• X variable
• Commonly called a cause
• In behavioral experiments, environmental change

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Dependent Variable

• What is measured in an experiment
• Y variable
• Commonly called an effect
• In behavioral experiments, behavior of the
  organism

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The Reversal Design and Behavioral Analysis

• Experimental design is commonly used to study
  behavior-environment relationships.
• A-B-A-B reversal is a powerful tool used to show
  causal relationships among stimuli, responses,
  and consequences.
• The reversal design is ideally suited to show
  that an organisms behavior is regulated by
  specific features of the environment.

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A-B-A-B Reversal

• The A-phase, the baseline, measures behavior
  before the researcher induces an environmental
  change.
• During baseline, the experimenter takes repeated
  measures of the behavior under study, and this
  establishes a criterion against which any changes
  (caused by the independent variable) may be
  assessed.
• Following the baseline phase, an environmental
  condition is changed (B-phase) and behavior is
  repeatedly measured.
• If the independent variable, or environmental
  condition, has an effect, then the behavioral
  measure (dependent variable) will change
  (increase or decrease).

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Internal and External Validity

• When many extraneous variables are ruled out by
  an experimental design, the research has high
  internal validity.
• External validity refers to the extent that an
  experimental finding is generalized to other
  behavior, settings, and populations.

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Internal Validity

• There are numerous threats to internal validity.
• History refers to conditions that change at the
  same time as the manipulation of the independent
  variable.
• Maturation is a source of invalidity referring to
  biological or psychological processes that change
  over time.
• Reactive measurement is when a dependent variable
  changes just because it is being measured.
• Instrument decay is another threat to internal
  validity which refers to observers becoming
  better or worse at measuring the dependent
  variable.

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External Validity

• External validity refers to the extent that
  laboratory findings generalize over time, place,
  dependent measures, and similar experimental
  manipulations. Does this mean that cause and
  effect relationships found in an experiment occur
  at different times and places, with different
  organisms and diverse responses, when the
  original conditions are in effect?
• A result of laboratory findings is shown to have
  generality when we are able to identify the
  conditions that produce it.
• Reactive Measurement refers to a change in the
  dependent variable from measuring it

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Replication of Results

• Generalizing from single-subject experiments is a
  well-founded scientific strategy.
• A single subject is exposed to all values of the
  independent variable, and the experiment is run
  on several subjects. Each subject replicates the
  experiment if there are four subjects, the
  investigation is repeated four separate times.
• Thus, every additional individual in a
  single-subject experiment constitutes a direct
  replication of the research.
• Direct replication involves manipulating the
  independent variable in the same way for all
  subjects in the experiment.
• Systematic replication uses procedures that are
  different but are logically related to the
  original research question.

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Correspondence with Laboratory Settings

• External validity corresponds between laboratory
  settings and conditions closer to natural
  settings.
• A researcher in a lab may hold many extraneous
  variables constant which will strengthen internal
  validity.
• When all things are held constant, the external
  validity is compromised.

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Generality and Single-Subject Research

• A common misunderstanding about single-subject
  experiments is that its generalizations are not
  possible because a few individuals do not
  represent the larger population.
• Some social scientists believe that experiments
  must include a large group of individuals in
  order to make general statements. This position
  is valid if the social scientist is interested in
  descriptions of what the average individual does.
• Behavior analysts are less interested in
  aggregate or group effects. Instead the analysis
  focuses on the behavior of the individual. These
  researchers are concerned with predicting,
  controlling, and interpreting the behavior of
  single organisms.

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Assessment of Behavior Change

• Single-subject experiments require a baseline
  period of measurement.
• This baseline serves as a comparison or reference
  for any subsequent change in behavior produced by
  the independent variable.
• Assessment of behavior change may be more
  difficult if there is a trend in the baseline
  measures.
• A trend is a systematic decline or rise in the
  baseline values.
• A downward or upward drift in baseline may be
  acceptable if the treatment is expected to
  produce an opposite trend.