The Experimental Analysis of Behavior

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Chapter 2
The Experimental Analysis of Behavior
Prepared by Brady J. Phelps, South Dakota State
University
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• The experimental analysis of behavior relies on a
  method of analyzing behavior-environment
  relations known as functional analysis.
• The term function refers to an effect produced by
  either a behavioral or an environmental event.
  What function did that stimulus serve? What
  outcome did that behavior produce?
• Once a preliminary analysis is conducted, a
  researcher uses experimental methods to show a
  causal relation between an environmental event
  and a specified response.
• 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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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 thinking 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 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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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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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 or she met previous sexual partners.

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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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Operant baselines and behavioral neuroscience

• Steady-state performance
• Baseline sensitivity

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Replication of Results

• Generalizing from single-subject research 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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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.

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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
  to 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

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Remembering as Behavior

• A response (remembering your high school
  graduation) 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 (remembering
  your third grade teacher), 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.

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Remembering as Behavior

• 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.
• Remembering IS behavior.