Behaviorism and Applied Behavior Analysis
by guest author, David J. Cox, M.S.B.
In Burrhus Frederic Skinner’s 1974 book entitled About Behaviorism, he outlines 20 commonly stated misconceptions regarding behaviorism and the science of behavior. Sadly enough, 31 years later many misconceptions still exist in the majority of the larger society. With the recent uptick in interest in behaviorism and Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) due to HIMAT legislation and growing awareness of autism, I wanted to dispel some of the myths regarding the philosophy of behaviorism and its correlating science of application, ABA. Before we dive into five of the common misconceptions that are currently floating around society, a few definitions are in order.
Too often when the topic of “behavior” comes up I hear parents, siblings, other professionals, teachers, para-educators, etc. only think of and describe negative behaviors their child or loved one engages in. Even then they tend to limit the discussion and the scope of their thoughts to only things such as aggression, temperament, tantruming, etc. Although these certainly are within the realm of behaviorism and Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), they are but only a smidgeon of the true scope and nature of behaviorism and ABA. The fact is that behavior, by definition, is the activity of living organisms and includes everything that people do. A technical definition for my fellow philosophizing scientific type, behavior is “that portion of an organism’s interaction with its environment that is characterized by detectable displacement in space through time of some part of the organism and that results in a measurable change in at least one aspect of the environment”[i]. In other words, everything that we do is behavior, not just the “bad” things we do.
Likewise there are still many misconceptions regarding exactly what Applied Behavior Analysis is and the scope to which it can be used. To give a definition I will defer to the “White Book” of applied behavior analysis titled, Applied Behavior Analysis, by John Cooper, Timothy Heron, and William Heward. On page 3 of the first chapter the authors define ABA as, “a science devoted to the understanding and improvement of human behavior…focus[ing] on objectively defined behaviors of social significance”[ii] (my italics). ABA intervenes “to improve the behaviors under study while demonstrating the reliable relationship between their interventions and the behavioral improvements; and they use the methods of scientific inquiry – objective description, quantification, and controlled experimentation.” In other words, ABA is a systematic process for understanding what variables affect and would allow one to predict how any living organism behaves.
5 Common Misconceptions Regarding Behaviorism and ABA:
1. It ignores consciousness, feelings, and states of mind. This is in fact not true at all. Behaviorism recognizes both the presence of consciousness, feelings, and states of minds as well as the relative importance of these things within the behavior of living organisms. Behaviorism just takes it to the next step and wants to determine exactly what caused the behaving organism of interest to have those feelings and states of mind. Often these things are attributable to something within one’s environment in the present moment or in the behaving individual’s past.
2. It neglects innate endowment and argues that all behavior is acquired during the lifetime of the individual. One would be hard pressed to find a behaviorist that exists today that does not recognize and understand the parameters that genetics and one’s natural biological making impart on a behaving individual. On the flip side of the token, it also recognizes that everyone and all behaving things have the ability to learn and Applied Behavior Analysis and the Experimental Analysis of Behavior are working to determine what exactly those “laws of learning” are.
3. It regards abstract ideas such as morality or justice as fictions. Again, the philosophy of behaviorism doesn’t attempt to get rid of and ignore mental processes, cognition or the development of concepts and ideas. This common misconception is driven by two other philosophical positions that are only a portion of the philosophies related to behaviorism, structuralism and methodological behaviorism.
Structuralism developed in the 1950s and 1960s in France and argues that a specific domain of a culture or an individual may be understood by means of structure that is distinct from both the organizations of reality and those ideas of the imagination. By giving an explicit description of the structure surrounding a given domain one is looking at, predictions are believed to be possible on the principle that what people have often done they are likely to do again.
Methodological behaviorism believes that we can gain nothing by looking at mental states, beliefs, and desires. Methodological behaviorism considers “only those facts which can be objectively observed in the behavior of one person in relation to his prior environmental history” and tries to avoid the mentalistic problem by “going directly to the prior physical causes while bypassing intermediate feelings or states of mind”[iii].
The other two areas of behaviorism, psychological behaviorism and analytical/logical behaviorism are philosophies that attempt to explain the behavior of living organisms in terms of external stimuli, learning histories, schedules of reinforcement, and the behavioral dispositions and behavioral tendencies that are associated with the mental states and conditions we label as emotions, beliefs, desires, etc. These philosophies attempt to characterize what a person might do in a particular situation based on the individual’s surrounding environment and the resulting collateral products that are introspectively observed in one’s own body. What is felt is viewed not as some nonphysical world of consciousness, mind, or mental life, but the observer’s own body.
4. ABA is synonymous with discrete trial training. Many believe that ABA is only discrete trial training involving sitting at a table and targeting skill acquisition through “drill and kill”. Discrete trial is but a single strategy out of a large array of tactics and strategies for teaching various behaviors. The general concept behind discrete trial training of learning a skill through repeated exposure to learning opportunities holds true not only for ABA as a whole but for many learning theories. If one comes into contact with someone claiming to do ABA that utilizes only discrete trial training I would run for hills as they are completely misconstruing the vast research literature behind many other behavioral strategies and principles and, in my opinion, would not be a good ABA therapist in any sense of the word. For instance Natural Environmental Teaching is another common strategy within ABA that utilizes the natural environmental for that particular individual to teach various skills. There is also extensive literature within ABA that discusses utilization of play both to teach skills to individuals, especially younger children, and as the most appropriate means to do so based on developmental literature and basic concepts surrounding motivation and generalization of reinforcement to naturally existing contingencies.
5. ABA is treatment only for autism spectrum disorders. Although there has been a significant amount of literature regarding the successful implementation of ABA to “treat” individuals with autism spectrum disorders, the concepts of ABA are applied in ALL AREAS RELATED TO LIVING ORGANISMS. A few examples are: health and exercise, AIDS prevention, conservation of natural resources, parenting, mental disorders, rehabilitation and independent living, coaching, pediatric feeding, use of seatbelts, gerontology, robotics, neuroscience, zoo management and care of animals, medical procedures, littering, gambling, worker productivity, education, language acquisition, industrial safety, crime and forensics, and on and on. ABA can be and is applied anywhere a living organism is behaving, whether or not those behaviors are actively or passively being changed and/or maintained.
To avoid writing a novel on this topic I’ll end the discussion here for this article. However I hope I was able to get across the point that there are many misconceptions regarding behaviorism and ABA and these are but a small sample of those misconceptions. Granted some may or may not agree with the many aspects of ABA and behaviorism, but before one can truly begin to evaluate and utilize either of the aforementioned, a thorough understanding of what behaviorism and ABA are truly saying needs to be had before either dismissing them as a whole or embracing them wholeheartedly. I welcome anyone who wishes to learn more and engage in further dialogue regarding behaviorism and ABA to contact me at cox.david.j@gmail.com. We owe it to both ourselves and the individuals to whom we are placing within ABA programs or utilizing the concepts of behaviorism to do so.
[i] Johnston, J. M., & Pennypacker, H.S. (1993). Strategies and tactics of behavioral research (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ:Erlbaum as cited in Cooper, Heron, Heward.
[ii] Cooper, J.O., Heron, T.E., and Heward, W.L. (2007). Applied Behavior Analysis (2nd ed.). Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ.
