An approach to understanding behaviour originally based on the OPERANT CONDITIONING approach initiated by B.F.Skinner (1904-1990). Unlike BEHAVIOUR THERAPY, behaviour analysis is based on an understanding of the functional relations into which behaviours enter with the environment. This involves understanding proximal and distal antecedents for behaviour, and the consequences of behaviour. Antecedents may be general setting events—for example the presence of an audience without which a speaker would not deliver a lecture—or specific DISCRIMINATIVE CUES. Consequences which are reinforcing (see REINFORCEMENT) ensure that the behaviour increases in frequency and/ or is maintained in the presence of appropriate antecedents. Consequences which are punishing (see PUNISHMENT) result in a decrease in the frequency of the behaviour and/or the behaviour being at low probability in the presence of specific antecedents.
Behaviour analysis encompasses the experimental analysis of behaviour, which follows closely in the Skinnerian tradition, utilizing strict experimental control, often in laboratory settings using OPERANT CHAMBERS such as the SKINNER BOX. Since the 1970s there has been a decrease in the use of non-human animals, such as rats and pigeons, as experimental subjects, although the hallmark of the field is still its adherence to rigorous control of experimental variables, and the use of specific, single-subject research designs. Behaviour analysis also embraces applied behaviour analysis which involves clinical and other applications in real-world settings. These have included interventions with people with MENTAL RETARDATION, PSYCHOSIS, patients with cancer, head injury and burns, and many other clinical problems. People in industry, sport and the police have used behaviour analysis to improve their efficiency and effectiveness. Education settings, too, have often provided a forum for behaviour analytic interventions. Since the 1980s there has been an increase in community interventions, helping drivers and pedestrians, smokers, televisions viewers and consumers, among others.
Also in the 1980s attention began to be turned to forging relationships with other areas of psychology which had traditionally not been considered the province of behaviour analysis. Building on Skinner’s early work behaviour analysts began to explore topics such as PERCEPTION and cognition. Those working in ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE have used computer models to understand human functioning, and behaviour analysts challenged this in exploring the distinction between rule-governed and CONTINGENCY-shaped behaviour. Their argument is that much of human functioning, particularly cognition, is not rule-governed in the way we understand computers to work, but is shaped and selected by the environment just as other biological functions are. This puts behaviour analysis firmly within the sphere of the biological sciences, explaining the operant conditioning process (which is at the basis of behaviour analysis) as an example of variation and natural selection. In the brain sciences the same approach, together with a rejection of procedural computer models (see PROCEDURAL LEARNING), is to be found in NEURAL DARWINISM.
In the 1990s behaviour analysis began to be described as part of a broader philosophy of contextualism, which is the view that all phenomena can be understood only if one analyses the current circumstances—the context—under which they occur. This does not deny that people have experiences in the past which influence their current behaviour, but somehow these past influences must have an effect upon the current state of the organism. One leading behaviour analyst has described context as ‘just another word for contingencies of reinforcement, survival and cultural evolution. Contingencies describe the functional relationships of behaviour to the events in space and time that precede and follow the behaviour, in the lifetime of the individual (reinforcement), in the lifetime of species (survival), or in the lifetime of a cultural group (cultural evolution)’ (Hayes, 1987).
Part of the context which must be understood when conducting a behaviour analysis is the physiology of the organism. Although earlier neural modelling based on simple procedural computer models was rejected by behaviour analysts, they have welcomed and embraced CONNECTIONISM and NEURAL NETWORKS models, since these are biologically inspired approaches to learning as opposed to machine (computer) approaches. Behaviour analysts are also interested in using their approach to understand, and even design, communities. Skinner published a highly influential novel in 1948, Walden Two, which described a community designed and administered according to behaviourist principles, and since then many have tried to use the approach to help people to achieve more valued life-styles. Community design of this type is especially relevant in fields such as mental retardation.
Reference
Hayes S.C. (1987) A contextual approach to therapeutic change. In Psychotherapists in Clinical Practice: Cognitive and BehaviouralPerspectives, ed. N.Jacobson, Guilford Press: New York.
CHRIS CULLEN
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