B. F. Skinner’s Theory of Behavior

Skinner's Theory of Behavior

Skinner's Theory of Behavior possesses three metafeatures of sophisticated theories:
- Philosophical foundations
- Experimental operations
- Engineering applications

Philosophical Foundations

Philosophical foundations (frames of reference):
- No agent forms a qualitative core; instead, a quantitative analysis of behavioral properties and their contingent relations.
- Behavioral events are interpreted within their dimensional system of analysis, avoiding defaulting to other sciences' explanatory frameworks.

Experimental Operations

Experimental operations:
- Provide data supporting principles anchored in the laboratory analysis of the two-term contingency relation – the operant.
- Laboratory work begins with consequences of selection (postcedent impetus) and examines further contingency relations based upon the operant, combined with other variables, including antecedent ones.

Engineering Applications

Specific engineering applications:
- Derived from laboratory work merged with the theory’s interpretative frames of reference.
- These applications are vast with immense social benefits.
Skinner's Theory of Behavior introduced a revolutionary behavioral science based on the quantification of action properties combined with contingency selection.

Necessity of Theory

Skinner: "A theory is essential to the scientific understanding of behavior as a subject matter" (1999a, p. 348).
Skinner hoped his theory would form the basis of psychology and the analysis of all behavioral phenomena.
Skinner: "What is emerging in psychology…is a theory that refers to facts at a single level of observation" (1999b, p. 350).
Skinnerian theory became the foundation for behavior analysts and behaviorologists.

Lack of Explicit Articulation

Skinner’s Theory of Behavior has not been articulated as such.
Those who designate themselves as behavior analysts and behaviorologists utilize bits and pieces of Skinner's work.
Without an explicit articulation, labels are vague as to operating within Skinner's framework of behavioral science.
Various professionals in diverse disciplines espouse Skinnerian principles but blend them with other concepts.
Some members of ABAI are Kantorian, working within J. R. Kantor’s Interbehavioral Psychology.
Some psychologists engage in Skinnerian science as one point of view within psychology.
Some promote a new behaviorism, caricaturing the old “Skinnerian” position.

Mutated Behavior Analysts

Some mutated behavior analysts use Skinner's core concepts but consider them passé, especially his analysis of verbal behavior.
Most behavior analysts use Skinnerian principles practically for their disciplinary practices, acting as "behavioral engineers" who "identify controlling variables and implement them with precision in applied settings" (Iversen, 2012, p. 66).
Behaviorologists are fewer but vary in their interpretations, with some promoting physicalistic interpretations that Skinner rejected.
Differences of opinion and ambiguities of interpretation are typical in the history of sciences.

Contentious Differences

Darwin’s theory of evolution faced rejection both within and outside biological science.
Hull (1973), Mayr (1991), and Ruse (2006) provide overviews of these contentions.
Hull (1973) gives the status of the philosophy of science during Darwin’s time, which was heavily oriented to a physicalistic interpretation of events.
Mayr (1991) describes the resistance encountered within and outside the scientific community.
Ruse (2006) examines the issues that pose difficulties for biologists and non-biologists.
Biographies, like Janet Browne’s on Darwin, also illustrate these disputations.

Science as a Scuffled Enterprise

Science is a many-splendored but also a many-scuffled enterprise.
Alarms and contusions over Skinnerian science in behavior analysis and behaviorology communities appear typical but aimless.
Darwin’s theory provided a frame of reference for understanding and adjudicating differences.
Epigenetic consequences introduce a Lamarckian aspect to “inheritance,” adjusting the effects of the selection mechanism.
Different readers with the same professional label interpret Skinnerian science differently.
Bits and pieces of Skinner’s corpus are patched together to fashion new theoretical creatures.
Efforts are worsened by not calling Skinner’s theory what it is – his Theory of Behavior.
A clear articulation of Skinner's Theory of Behavior is necessary to avoid disciplinary meanderings.

Key Questions for a Science of Behavior

Is there a science independent of other behavioral sciences? If so, what is it?
If it exists, how should the “there” be described?
What are the criteria of reference for interpreting behavioral facts?
What are the philosophic framework, experimental support, and practical impact of this science?
A coherent theory of behavior provides answers to these questions for each metafeature.

Theory and Interpretation

All discussions of behavioral events imply a theory or framework of interpretation.
Typical interpretations use lay language with explicit or implied reasons for actions.
Skinner (1991a): "The important objection to the vernacular in the description of behavior is that many of its terms imply conceptual schemes" (p. 7).
Scientific analysis of behavior must work with its own formulations.
Engineering payoff: "Only an effective and progressive theory of behavior…will make it possible to apply the methods of science to human affairs to every field" (Skinner, 1999b, p. 358).
Clarity provided to scientific work: A formulated theory articulates central propositions for testing and extension.

Defining Theory

Skinner (1999b): A theory is "statements about organizations of facts" (p. 348).
Gerald Holton provides an overview of the role of theory in Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought, Kepler to Einstein (1973).
Mary Hesse (1972) presents a discussion in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
No set conclusion emerges on the understanding of theory.

Nature of Theoretical Analysis

Theoretical analysis need not be extensive or based on the theorist’s experimental effort.
A theory can stretch out without an equation, supported by a massive marshaling of details.
No prevailing definition of what a “theory” should look like; a community of scientists agrees about it.
Independent of content, principles of any theory display metafeatures: philosophical foundations, engineering practices, and experimental operations.

Theory Metafeatures

Any theory has philosophical foundations underpinning the interpretation of its data.
Scientists describe a world that is there, not just constructed from stray notions.
If accurate, a theory leads to effective engineering practices.
Many theories gain support from experimental operations.
A theory is constantly tested by the prior successes and later results of its metafeatures.
The utility of a theory depends on the effects of all three of its metafeatures.

Theory Summarized

A theory is not shoddy speculations but a set of intermingled statements analyzing, explaining, and summarizing phenomena.
Precise predictions can be made, and engineering practices devised from these statements.
Prediction and practice confirm the theory: prediction through accuracy, practice through effectiveness.
Duration over time depends on repeated success of prediction and practice.
Rewards of predicting correctly and practicing effectively achieve permanence through replication and extension.

Overview of Skinner's Theory of Behavior

Skinner’s Theory of Behavior consists of philosophical frames of reference, experimental operations, and engineering applications.
A quick pictorial glimpse of the overall structure will do as a start before a wider survey of what occupies those floors (foundations, extensions, etc.).
Figure 1 represents the scaffolding of the theory and concisely summarizes it pictorially.

Key Elements in Skinner's Theory

Theory figure denotes frames of reference: movements when contingently selected by their consequences are interpreted as operants.
Two-term (2 t) contingent relations of action and stimulus property classes (operants) expand into further networks of contingency relations.
Depending on contingent controls, probabilities of action properties either increase or decrease due to:
- Characteristics of events (reinforcement or punishment – 3 t) that follow action-property classes.
- Commonality of shared features (induction or generalization – 3 t) of action-properties.
- Prior stimulus-properties paired with already-in-place contingency relations (evocation or discrimination).

Further Processes

Interactions among these basic contingency relationships give rise to further processes:
- Autoshaping, equivalence, matching, schedules, and others.
Contingency relationships occur with actions that directly contact their inner or outer milieus (event-shaped and event-governed behavior).
Actions whose contact with events is mediated through culturally prescribed mediation (verbal-shaped and verbal-governed behavior – 4 t+).
Measures involving time such as rate are favored.
The figure spotlights only a few engineering practices that stem from theoretical and experimental undertakings.
Each metafeature reciprocally interacts with its other components, advancing and amending the science.

Importance of Frame of Reference

No one metafeature component is more important than any other.
The frame of reference advances a science more than efforts to obtain specific data.
Data from naturalistic observation are just as powerful as experimental manipulations.
The frame of reference by which data are interpreted supplies their explanation and the basis for the theory.
Mayr (1965): The philosophical dog wags the experimental tail.

Philosophical Themes

Movement and Frame of Reference:
- Skinner’s theory is vast, with immense experimental operations and engineering practices.
- Experimental domain examples: equivalence relations (e.g., Arntzen, 2012), contingency schedules (e.g., Palya & Allan, 2003), joint attention (e.g., Holth, 2006).
- Engineering practices examples: autism or organizational management.
- The degree of success depends on the philosophical frame of reference when interpreting the actions encountered.

Data and Frame of Reference

Data derived from experimental operations do not stand in isolation from the frame of reference the experimenter brings to bear on them.
Galileo: not simply measuring rolls of balls but how he interpreted those events provoked the split from prior work in physics (Butterfield, 1953).
Movements of objects were thought by Aristotelian natural philosophers as due to impetuosity.
Galileo rejected such occult notions; movement and distance were due to contingent relations between speed and slope.
Darwin: "How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service" (quoted in Hull, 1973, p. 277).
Skinner (2013): To interpret behavioral events properly requires a given frame of reference.

Skinner on Frame of Reference

Skinner defines the subject matter of his science as "the movement of an organism or of its parts in a frame of reference" (p. 6).
Behavior is what an organism is doing in its "commerce" with the world.
Contingencies assert the critical consideration, including analysis about movement and the role of frame of reference.
In analyzing movement, three concurrent circumstances coexist:
- Behavior occurs inside and outside the organism.
- Events occur coincident with actions.
- Actions and events occur over time – before, during, and after (see Figure 2).

Time and Epistemological Considerations

Time is always a factor, so epistemological considerations bear on whether actions took place in the past, are now current, or may occur in the future.
Paleontologists, therapists, family members, legal systems, and insurance businesses deal with past, current, and future behavior.
The issue of where actions are located also brings to bear epistemological considerations, particularly verification of what was reported.
The term “private event” is a misnomer; validity depends on predicting accurately and whether practical results can ensue.
Events that actions encounter may be described in any dimensional system – physical, biological, or behavioral.

Events and Significance

They obtain behaviorological significance only within the frame of reference of Skinner’s theory.
Movement by itself portrays no significance; it's significant when “observed by another organism” (Skinner, 1991a, p. 6) and takes place in a “frame of reference provided by the organism itself or by various external objects or fields of force” (p. 6).
The workable criteria of invariance still remain prediction and practicality.
A culture produces a repertoire in an organism that observes other aspects of its repertoire.
Frames of reference define the doings of an organism and provide the significance of its actions (see Figure 3).

Reference Frames

Only two reference frames – agencyless and dimensional – shall be dissected in detail. The rest shall be simply defined.

Agencyless

The second part of Skinner’s doctoral thesis (1930a) presented experimental operations on what he then called the “reflex” relation.
The thesis reviewed the history of the concept of the reflex, highlighting the conflict between observed necessity and preconceptions of freedom.
In animal life, the soul was held responsible for movement.
Movement had become an organic process subject to experimental investigation.
Unpredictable variability led to asserting non-physical concepts such as mind or volition as its cause.

Pavlov's Work

Pavlov’s work may be taken as historically fundamental since the principle of conditioning supplied the extended range of stimulation needed to account for the complex behavior of the total organism.
Pavlov’s work is a cornerstone of behaviorological science, but the focus here is the exclusion of a non-material cause.
Description of behavior rests on relationships: correlations between actions and stimuli and secondary correlations with third variables.
Primary functional relations between actions and stimulus variables do not derive from antecedent events.
Typical solutions construe an agency to adjust for discrepancies in paired values of observed sets of values.
Skinner stepped outside the stimulus–response formula.

Skinner's Position

Skinner’s investigated the selective effects of an immediate milieu upon those actions that impact it.
Selection effects of internal or external milieus combine with effects of third variable events and produce changes in classes of action properties.
It made unnecessary any agency.
Skinner’s thematic interpretation applied to events the organism’s behavior directly encountered and to those actions mediated by others, like language.
Skinner (1992) summed up his position by stating he could demonstrate a variable exerts functional control over a response.

Exclusion of Agency

In this analysis of verbal and lingual behavior, the agent disappears.
This exclusion puts forward the most radical thema in the Skinnerian frames of reference.
The issue was how we talked about behavioral events wherever situated.
Skinner’s theory excludes “mind” as an explanatory principle and any agency or feature within the organism.
Skinner’s analysis moves to the contingencies between actions and events, finalizing the dethronement of humankind’s dominion over nature.
The implications have not been lost to those who object.
Holton (1973): This upsets those with an opposite one.

Selectional Starting Point

All theories of behavior have a starting point for why actions take place.
Overwhelmingly, this starting point is an antecedent one, where some event initiates an activity.
Skinner starts with what occurs after an action contacts its milieu.
Such contact makes available a selective effect on later occurrences of equivalent actions, and their class of actions.
The starting point for his theory is a postcedent one.
He avoids the term “cause”; instead, concentrating on the reciprocal interplay between actions and selectional effects.

Selectional Effects

Selection effects can shape new topographies of behavior from the variation within a class of actions.
A selection effect increases the probability that a member of that class will occur or even that the particular class will.
Ferster & Skinner, 1997 and Skinner, 1992 present the theme of classes of action impacting their milieu and that milieu in turn through its selection mechanism changing those actions.
Classes of action impact their milieu and change it, and that milieu in turn through its selection mechanism changes those actions in a dynamic reciprocal interplay between actions and milieus, both inner or outer and over time.

Probabilistic Nature

In Skinner’s Theory of Behavior, probability is inferred from the rate at which actions occur.
Skinner (2013): A natural datum in a science of behavior is the probability that a given bit of behavior will occur at a given time.

Contingency and Definition

The Oxford English Dictionary gives a number of definitions for contingent, contingency, and contingently.
All denote the probability of occurrence depending on circumstances.
Examples:
- Contingent: "not determined by necessity in regard to action or existence"; "may or may not happen"; "dependent on the existence or occurrence of something else".
- Contingency: "a possible or uncertain event upon which other things depend or are conditional".
- Contingently: "not under predetermined necessity".
Critics call Skinner’s analysis deterministic when it is its antithesis.

Dimensional Independence

Skinner advanced an independent science of behavior.
Explanatory terms would not refer to another science’s dimensional system.
Skinner (1999a): When we attribute behavior to a neural or mental event, we forget that we still have to account for the neural or mental event.
The difficulty is in getting a good grip on what he means by another science’s dimensional system.
It is not a rejection of the validity of an alternative science’s enterprise nor the benefit of interplay between the sciences.
It is a declaration of the proper role of a class of sciences in the understanding of movement.

Definition of Dimensional System

Dimensional system: Each class of science deals with movement in units and measures appropriate to the type of analysis that science class makes by how it frames its investigation of the properties of movement.

Physical Sciences

The physical sciences examine movement with respect to its physical properties such as its direction and magnitude.
Vector values facilitate placing any displacement of movement in space.
In investigating matter, the atom still constitutes the basic unit split into further subdivisions (see Figure 4).

Biological Dimension

In the biological dimension, sciences such as physiology deal with movement as responses.
Conceptual concerns are the organic nature of response – reactions understood by examining biochemical pathways to specific stimuli, or their species-specific role within Darwin’s theory of evolution (see Figure 5).
The cell constitutes the most convenient functional and structural unit of analysis.
The biological dimension constitutes a separate form of explanation from the physical one.
Feynman (2008): Physicist cannot answer biologist's questions.
Ernst Mayr (1965) states that trying to express evolution in terms of physics has no operational value.

Behavioral Sciences

The behavioral sciences are in a muddle: they have yet to sort out a basic unit of analysis within their dimensional sphere.
The default position is to revert to the biological sciences, making the nervous system the causal agent of “choice.”
This retreat undercuts the validity of an independent class of behavioral sciences and interferes with obtaining a proper understanding of individual and social action.
Skinner’s Theory of Behavior underpins the behavioral sciences.
It supplies the framework of analysis by which to analyze behavioral properties and the contingencies by which those properties operate.
It gives a basic unit of analysis, the operant (see Figure 6).

Summarized Relations

The figure implies but does not indicate the great deal of interaction that takes place between the classes of science, the separate sciences within those classes, and the interdisciplinary sciences overlapping between the boundaries of science classes.
Dimensional systems and conceptual understanding.

Independence and Conceptual Understanding

The dimensional independence of the classes of science from each other does not reject that much is gained by what one class of sciences can give to another.
Reciprocity enhances only by a cautious insertion from one dimensional system into another of relevant concepts, avoiding the subversion of one science in order to gain a dubious respectability from the other.
Whatever insertion occurs must expand an understanding within the given science’s dimensional system of analysis, not subordinate that science’s explanations to another.
A behaviorological analysis can be made of neurological activity that illuminates both the role of the sciences of neurology and behaviorology in their interaction.

Complementarity and Skinner's Perspective

Silva and her colleagues (2007) contributed an example of how neuronal activity can be interpreted within a behaviorological framework.
If brain states were studied as behavioral events, thoughts and feelings hitherto private might be adequately observed as neural activity.
Neural stimulation acts as a discriminative stimulus for operant responses that are in turn maintained by neural consequences.
It is ironic that Skinner's theory is called reductionistic, since Skinner theory calls for explanatory terms within the level of integration of the behavioral sciences themselves.

Amplification vs. Substitution

The explanatory and descriptive concepts of each science’s dimensional system point to how developments in one science should be regarded with respect to another science.
At best, what occurs in a science of a given dimensional system amplifies the findings of a science within another dimensional system; it does not substitute for the concepts and principles of that other science.
All classes of sciences attend to movement and deal with it in their own parametric manner.
A common activity may be addressed by various sciences in differing dimensional systems.

Evo-devo and Epigenetics

Recent developments in evolutionary development (evo-devo) and epigenetics may indicate issues of significance for behaviorological science, depending on the issue in question.
Evo-devo and epigenetics reveal a genome highly sensitive to environmental impact.
A chemical insult or even what is eaten (or not) may have epigenetic effects generationally and multigenerationally.
An epigenetic outcome is simply one of the mechanisms to consider, just as an environment affects behavior or a gene does, requiring specification of the mechanisms by which an effect occurs.
Behaviorological science takes into account any pertinent biological mechanism.

Dimensional Systems and Science Complementarity

Alongside clear-cut types of analysis that belong to different dimensional systems affecting their interaction, there is the complementary interplay between them.
Any particular instance of this complementarity must be dealt with on its own merits.
Skinner consistently addressed the interplay that takes place between the types of sciences – physical, biological, or behavioral.
Skinner asserted the complementary nature of the physiological and behavioral sciences, setting the stage for removing “soul” and “mind” as explanations for the behavior of the intact organism.

Interplay of Sciences

Each science is necessary for the other to complete the scientific story on an analysis of action.
Skinner (1978) even addresses how the spread of the sea floor may have shaped the phylogenetic behavior of the eel.
Catania (2014) demonstrates understanding how species interact with their immediate ecology must take into account the behavioral dimension.
The degree and type of contribution must be sorted out, without undercutting any science’s contribution due to the presumed prestige of another.

Selection Mechanisms

Moving between one science’s dimensional framework to another becomes a slippery slope due to similar selection process.
Correspondence between Darwin and Skinner is easy to note.
Gould (1991) points to Darwinian ideas of chanciness, contingency, unpredictability, opportunism, and quirkiness, which could easily be said of Skinner’s ideas.
Darwin analyzed physiological components, anatomical forms, and behavioral features of species altered through natural selection.
Skinner’s selection mechanisms operate within their own dimensional system of behavior, addressing action properties of any member of any species.

Skinner's Mechanisms

In Skinner’s behavioral science a particular effect of a contingency selection, to reinforce, means to increase the probability of a class of actions as defined by a specified property such as repeatedly taking something.
Skinner’s mechanism of contingency selection pertains to the actions of an individual organism (human and infrahuman) over its lifetime, and to classes of actions of aggregates (societies and institutions) over generational lifetimes.
Contingency selection applies to social behavior of groups of individuals interacting with their milieu, and through mediating behavior through custom and language.

Cultural Properties

Classes of culturally conditioned operants are conventionally identified by terms such as hunting, collecting, warfare, feuding, polygynous households, etc.
The explanation takes the biological status of organism as a given to focus on the cultural effects.
Diamond (1997) provides an answer to why white people have so much cargo by saying that history followed different courses due to environmental differences, not biological differences.
Harris (2007) points out the behaviorologists’ “neglect of the systemic properties of cultural phenomena” (p. 37).
How to deal with this situation demands knowing how the structural components of a culture operate with respect to each other.
A behaviorological analysis can frame these components only within the language of anthropology and other social sciences.

Summary of Framework

Each science’s framework of description reflects directly what controls those scientists’ actions working within that dimensional level.
In the analysis of verbal and lingual behavior, meaning results from the controlling variables for what is said or written or gestured.
Attempting to explain concepts ensuing from observation at one science’s level of observation at another science’s level of observation robs both of their meaning.
Materialistic:

Materialistic Views

Skinner’s theory provides the foundations for an independent science of behavior operating within its own dimensional system yet sharing the materialistic framework common to other classes of science.
Behaviorological science does not deal with a world of appearances behind which lies another world responsible for those appearances; the reasons for events would never be contacted directly.
What behaviorologists and behavior analysts encounter includes what is said to be an appearance.
Behavior is the subject of study, not a surrogate through which we study some other entity.

Sciences and Alternative Frames

All the sciences have had this running battle with alternative frames of reference about a world behind the world that is contacted (see Figure 8).
Brief Reminder: Philosophical themas of Skinner’s Theory of Behavior designate one of its metafeatures.
Experimental operations.
Engineering applications.
We now provide only a brief overview of the other two: experimental operations and engineering applications.

Experimental Operations: A Summary

Experimentation constituted an intimate part of Skinner’s behavioral science from its very beginning.
Both direct contact with events and contact mediated by a culture have been studied experimentally.
The experimental efforts pursued include equivalence, matching, and schedules, reflected in thousands of publications and presentations.
Morse and Dews (1997) highlight an important fact that sprang from this work.
Schedule histories, the sequential intertwining of responding and contingent consequences, are the primary determinants of current behavior.

Effects and Laboratories

Explanations of behavior in terms of generalized motivational states are untenable when an individual responds in different ways depending on the history of contingencies associated with the current stimulus conditions.
Many laboratories operate in universities, industries, and countries throughout the world.
Many journals address issues in the science.
New disciplines have emerged, blending behaviorological principles and concepts with those of another science, for example behavioral pharmacology (Laties, 2003).

Experimental Outcomes

The finding that the action of a drug could be determined by the distinctive features of ongoing behavior provided added credibility to the experimental utility of behavioral control by schedules of reinforcement and incorporated the study of drugs as another variable to be explored within the realm of the experimental analysis of behavior.
Most importantly, “the effects [of the drugs] were determined completely by the prevailing schedule of reinforcement” (Barrett, 2006, p. 361).
Drug action is not a one-way street from drugs to activities.

Respondent Conditioning

The experimental efforts also encompass respondent conditioning, which Skinner's Theory of Behavior includes.
Such inclusion requires a broad view of how behavior interacts with its environment.
In its reciprocal exchange with its immediate world, an organism inherits, from the species to which it belongs, activities that facilitate effective action.

Respondent Behavior

Skinner mentions Respondent behaviors in regards to preparing organisms for unpredictable features of their environments.
Skinner includes respondent factors as “third variables,” for example as in emotion, and a number of behavioral scientists working within the Skinnerian framework of analysis attend to respondent processes.

Entanglement and Expansion

It is to be expected that respondent and operant processes should be entangled in these sets of actions.
The expanded behaviors widen from both respondent and operant effects and processes.
In sum, the experimental analysis of properties of behavior addresses attributes of behavioral phenomena found among all members of a given species, in any setting, and in any species of the animal kingdom.

Experimental Science and Organisms

A scientific fact (or law) is the verbal behavior of scientists not what it addresses.
Skinner’s science, addresses principles of behavior initially discovered in experimental investigation of behavioral properties.
Predicted outcomes and successful results of practical efforts confirm the experimental analyses.

Engineering Applications: A Summary

Engineering achievements continue to be monumental, touching every institutional area in society.
From caring for children with autism to safekeeping animals in zoos, technologies from Skinner’s Theory effectively achieve humane objectives.
These achievements undergird Skinner’s Theory of Behavior, showing its utility and validating it.
The efforts are greater and more widespread than in the experimental domain, involving more organisms and groups beyond formal Skinnerian scientists.

Illustrations of Engineering

Three types of endeavors under the label of "behavior analysis" illustrate the reach of Skinner’s Theory of Behavior are:
- Skinnerian science transforming the field of education, techniques of teaching impacting most levels of education.
- Douglas Greer, Francis Mechner, and Mark Sundberg providing the engineering and research support for progressively complicated repertoires.
- Ethical effects, where traditional education relied on punishment.

Ethical Aspects

With engineering practices based on Skinner’s Theory, a powerful shift occurs from suppressing actions to improving and increasing them, capturing how a technology enhances the welfare of the individual.
When dealing with difficult deportment, teachers interpret disruptive actions in a manner that attends to contingent conditions instead of blaming the student.

Behavioral and Medical Interactions

In special difficulties of a clinical kind, behaviorological application intersects with medicine, for example, in the care of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
Copeland and Buch (2013) summarize the literature and point out early intervention treatments most improve targeted repertoires.
Of vital importance is proper lingual behavior, linking various aspects of social settings.

Instruction and Ethical Implications

Inherent in Skinner’s Theory of Behavior as it applies to education:
- The instructional matrix is action-dense; for each new element, the student must act.
- It is cybernetic; feedback is provided to any action taken.
- Feedback is bidirectional, delivered not only to student but also to the designer.
- The ethical posture is positive; deviation does not denote a flaw but the pedagogical procedures that produce it.

New Approaches

Cyberneticity of action-dense instruction combined with multitudes of repertoires means masses of data at each action frame flow back to instructors.
Instruction becomes a team-based enterprise, as it moves from the Lecture Model to the Cybernetic Model.
Looking after animals is another huge domain, employing techniques from Skinner’s Theory.
Zoos deploy behavior analytic techniques to teach animals to accept teeth cleaning or present ears for blood drawing.
Karen Pryor’s work makes available a window on the types of initiatives undertaken so far.

Research and Application

Many engineer demonstrate basic science work, then apply behavior analytic techniques and extend behaviorological principles to other animal species.
Reese (2004): "The behavior takes place in the open view of an empirical world. No nonphysical states, processes, or structures need to be inferred or invoked."
Pryor (2004) advances that trained responses and increased communication do not necessarily mean that the species has near-human capabilities.
The animal training is evolving from method to science-based training.

Physiological Phenomena

The third engineering endeavor stemming out of Skinner’s Theory of Behavior makes explicit the intimate interconnection between behaviorological and physiological phenomena, and how behaviorological techniques can clarify neurological activity.
Taub’s Constraint-induced Movement Therapy addresses profound loss of limb movement and is an example of efficacious rehabilitation treatments.
Lazar elucidates how operant techniques may be used to diagnose neurological disorders, such as continuous time measurement to detect the earliest signs of cerebral ischaemia.
Skinner’s science also guides efforts, from veterans’ rehabilitation to addiction, in various arenas of institutional and social action.

Conclusion

Science is not an unbroken march to foreseen conclusions but a human enterprise with fiery fits and starts, where concurrent efforts may be wrong but pursued with conviction.
In examining revolutionary changes, struggles take place over the philosophical themas by which facts are interpreted, and scientific revolutions have ideological and application components.

Public and Scientific Reaction

In the scientific community, the philosophic themas of Skinner’s Theory of Behavior have presented an obstacle.
Quantitative terms came to the forefront and qualitative attributes faded to the background in the interpretation.
If dismay in scientific circles exists, the outcry was far greater in the public sector.

No Inner Agency

The philosophic thema of no-agency-within was converted into an ideological battle cry which removes an actor from within an organism.

Science and Benefits

Skinner's benefitted greatly from the applications derived from it, bringing about a sea change in its acceptance by the public.
Engineering utilizations have accelerated, and benefits have become more prevalent.
Such educational undertakings are taking place on every continent.
The educational enterprises are currently emerging under the title of behavior analysis.
Skinner took a revolutionary step in the analysis of behavior.
Skinner initiated a behavioral science whose novel features only now begin to be recognized.
Any description of Skinner’s Theory of Behavior merely presents a starting point to further clarify it.