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Definition
The acquisition, maintenance, and change of an organism's behavior as a result of lifetime events (the ontogeny of behavior).
In everyday language, it is often used to refer to transitional changes in behavior (e.g., from not knowing to knowing one's ABC), but conditions that maintain behavior in a steady state are also part of what we mean (e.g., continuing to recite the alphabet). |
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| Everything that an organism does, including covert actions such as thinking. |
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| Experimental Analysis of Behavior |
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Definition
The method of investigation most commonly used in behavior analysis.
The method involves breaking down complex environment - behavior relations into component principles of behavior. The analysis is verified by arranging experimental procedures that reveal the underlying basic principles and controlling variables. This involves intensive experimentation with a single organism over an extended period, rather than statistical assessment of groups exposed to experimental treatments. |
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An increase in the rate of operant behavior as a function of its consequences.
Also refers to the procedure of presenting a reinforcing event when a response occurs. |
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| Also known as Behavior Analysis. |
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| A comprehensive experimental approach to the study of the behavior of organisms. Primary objectives are the discovery of principles and laws that govern behavior, the extension of these principles over species, and the development of an applied technology. |
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| Applied Behavior Analysis |
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| A branch of behavior analysis that uses behavior principles to solve practical problems such as the treatment of autism or improvement of teaching methods. It is also referred to as behavior engineering. |
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| When an unconditioned stimulus elicits an unconditioned response (US -> UR), the relationship is called this. |
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This refers to behavior that increase or decreases by the presentation of a conditioned stimulus (CS) that precedes the conditioned response (CR).
We say that the presentation of the CS regulates or controls the respondent (CR).
This type of behavior is elicited, in the sense that it reliably occurs when the CS is presented. The notation system used with elicited behavior is CS -> CR. The CS causes (arrow) the CR. |
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This occurs when an organism responds to a new event based on a history of pairing with a biologically important stimulus.
Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov discovered this form of conditioning at the turn of the century. |
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Definition
| An increase or decrease in operant response as a function of the consequences that have the response. |
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Definition
Behavior that operates on the environment to produce a change, effect, or consequence.
Particular responses increase or decrease in a situation as a function of the consequences that they produced int eh past.
This type of behavior is said to be emitted (rather than elicited) in the sense that behavior may occur at some frequency before any known conditioning. |
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| Selection by Consequences |
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Definition
Applies at all three levels:
- Natural/Darwinian selection - Selection over generations for genes related to survival and reproduction.
- Selection by Operant Conditioning - The selection for behavior within the lifetime of an individual organism
- Cultural Selection - The selection for behavior patterns (practices, traditions, rituals) of groups of human beings that endure beyond the lifetime of a single individual. |
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| Refers to the kind of mechanism studied by physics and chemistry; the "billiard ball" sort of process where we try to isolate a chain of events that directly result in some effect. |
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| Involves explaining how a phenomenon by pointing to remote events that made it likely. Thus, the causal explanation of a species characteristic (e.g., size, coloration, exceptional vision, etc.) involves the working of natural selection on the gene pool of the parent population. |
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| Contingency of Reinforcement |
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Definition
A definition of the relationship between the occasion, the operant class, and the consequences that follow the behavior (e.g., Sd: R --> Sr).
We change them by altering one of the components and observing the effect on behavior.
They can include more than three terms, as in conditional discrimination; also, the effectiveness of them depends on motivational events called establishing operations (e.g., deprivation and satiation). |
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| Alterations of neurons and neural interconnections during a lifetime by changes in environmental contingencies. |
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Definition
A scientific area that integrates the science of behavior (behavior analysis) with the science of the brain (neuroscience).
Areas of interest include the effects of drugs on the brain (behavioral pharmacology), neural imagining and complex stimulus relations, choice and neural activity, and the brain circuitry of learning and addiction. |
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Definition
Usually defined in terms of the ideas and values of a society.
However, behavior analysts define it as all the conditions, events, and stimuli arranged by other people that regulate human action. |
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| Same as conditioned response and conditioned stimulus. |
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| The scientific philosophy of behavior analysis. |
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A term coined by Thorndike, which he used to describe the results of his puzzle-box and maze-learning experiments.
Animals were said to make fewer and fewer errors over repeated trials, learning by trial and error. |
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Definition
As originally stated by Thorndike, this law refers to stamping in (or out) some response.
For example, a cat opened a puzzle-box door more rapidly over repeated trials.
Currently the law is stated as the principle of reinforcement - operants may be followed by consequences that increase (or decrease) the probability or rate of response. |
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| As used in respondent conditioning, the percentage of conditioning trials in which the conditioned stimulus (CS) is followed by the unconditioned stimulus (US), and the percentage or trial in which the C S is not followed by the US |
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| Researchers and practitioners of behavior analysis. |
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| Behavior that is only accessible to the person who emits it (e.g., thinking). |
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