Perspectives on Behavior Science最新文献

Only humans live in continuously and cumulatively changing worlds of their own making-cultural worlds. Theories of cumulative cultural evolution are multidisciplinary, depending heavily on the home disciplines of theorists. Virtually all cultural evolutionary theorists view behavior as fundamental to cultural evolution, but most theories focus on changes in social relations, or human cognition, or human brains. Here we attempt a first approximation to a behavior-based theory that explains the origins and evolution of the human-built world. We include topics such as the origin and evolution of cultural organization and resulting cultural systems, which have not often been addressed in this literature.

This article discusses three contributions to the special issue from the Symbolic Processes cluster in the second Theory and Philosophy conference. Each of the articles advances a naturalistic, learning-based account of complex linguistic and social phenomena. The article by Barnes-Holmes and colleagues suggests a refinement of relational frame theory (RFT) informed by findings emerging from research conducted with the IRAP protocol for the past decade. Degli-Espinosa offers a behavioral reinterpretation of the development of theory of mind with implications for understanding its absence in certain populations and the potential for remediation where necessary. Palmer presents a thorough-going behavioral account of word order in novel utterances and, by way of example, offers a blueprint for the analysis of syntactic organization in spoken languages more generally. This paper discusses the articles' conceptual innovations, empirical grounding, and the implications of the analyses for future research. The discussion ends with an appreciation of the shared philosophical and methodological commitments reflected in these articles.

The present article focuses on presentations from the second topical cluster from the 2024 Theory and Philosophy Conference held by the ABAI-Cultural Systems. The cultural systems cluster was comprised of two primary talks-"Unhinging Design from Darwinian and Skinnerian Selection" (Wasserman, 2024), and a second, co-authored by Sigrid Glenn and Maria Malott (and delivered by Sigrid Glenn), entitled "Behavior and Cumulative Cultural Evolution." We will begin by briefly summarizing some of the main points of each talk, and then discussing some of the implications of the arguments developed in each. The approach taken to link these two seemingly different primary talks will be interdisciplinary. I will seek to illustrate how dynamic patterns of systemic interactions within systems of physical energy parallel the dynamic patterns of behavioral systems and enable us to "reconstruct" some of the main principles emphasized in the primary talks, while also seeking to develop an understanding of how various processes of selection by consequences (natural selection, operant selection, and selection of cultures) emerge from systemic interactions.

Data collection and analysis are central to scientific research, including in applied and basic behavior analysis. A substantial amount of attention has been given to how to rigorously collect and analyze data. Less attention has been paid to storing and maintaining research data, which becomes a critical step in the data analysis pipeline as the complexity and amount of data increase. Relational databases provide an efficient, reliable, and flexible method to store, maintain, and explore behavioral research data. The current article argues for the utility of relational databases in behavioral research, presents a brief introduction to relational databases, and uses some real-world examples to illustrate how relational databases have been used by the author and colleagues. Adopting relational databases to store and maintain research data would improve data integrity, facilitate data sharing between researchers, and contribute to transparency and reproducibility of analyses.

In this article we investigate the teleological properties (functions and goals) of behavioral patterns, with emphasis on operant behaviors, including those associated with creativity and behavioral novelty. We integrate the etiological theory of teleology (as developed by Larry Wright, Ruth G. Millikan, James Garson, and others) with key concepts from behavior analysis. Although the language of functions and goals has traditionally faced resistance within behavior analysis, mainly due to concerns about causal confusion, we argue that such language is conceptually valuable when situated within the framework of selection by consequences. In the first part of the article, we disentangle teleological discourse from common misconceptions, particularly worries about reverse causation and the obstruction of causal explanation, drawing on insights from Larry Wright and others. In doing so, we set out what teleological concepts do not imply, while also identifying their core semantic features, such as the contrast between functions or purposes and mere accidents. In the second part, we develop an etiological interpretation of the teleological properties of behavioral patterns which, besides harmonious with the semantic core of teleological concepts, has theoretical synergies with behavior-analytic understanding of operant behavior, thus avoiding mentalistic aspects of some previous etiological readings of complex action. Our approach integrates Skinner's interpretation of selection processes with recent advancements in behavior analysis, including theories of operant generativity, behavioral variability, and relational frames. Finally, we conclude by setting our approach in contrast with two influential theories of teleology, in a way that brings into view its potential advantages.

Mass shootings affect both local and national communities and prompt extensive efforts to understand and prevent future events. Current approaches typically focus on profiling and typologizing mass shooters. Although these efforts are useful towards prediction of mass shootings, they do not tell us how to directly influence a shooter's behavior. Thus, our understanding of mass shootings remains incomplete. Given that behavior analysis is a systematic natural science approach to understanding all behavior, we believe it is poised to address this issue. This article focuses on fame-seeking shooters, which are a subset of all mass shooters. We first describe important behavior patterns and contextual events that have been associated with this subset. We propose that these behaviors are members of a larger response class which includes a mass shooting. We then provide a conceptualization of the selection process involved in the emergence of mass shooting behavior and its precursors. We close by describing several interventions aimed at disrupting the contingencies identified by the conceptual analysis. The goal of this article is to illustrate how behavior analysis may utilize and extend the currently existing and predominantly non behavior-analytic research (e.g., profiling and typologizing based on the form of behavior) to better enable the prediction and influence of mass shootings.

The recent resurgence of Kantorian interbehavioral psychology in the context of relational frame theory (RFT) has prompted a reevaluation of RFT's core concepts through an interbehavioral lens. Although RFT acknowledges its Kantorian roots, recent works have called for a more serious consideration of interbehaviorism in the context of developing the theory towards a more complete analysis of the complexity of human language and cognition. In particular, the current article aims to explore the alignment between the RFT concept of the relational frame and the interbehavioral interpretation of psychological happenings. To this end, the relational frame is dissected to clarify (mentalistic) misconceptions of RFT, and is then compared with interbehavioral constructs such as stimulus and response functions, substitute stimulation, and interbehavioral history. The integration of these perspectives suggests that RFT may benefit from a field-based approach to experimental and applied research. We argue that by applying the interbehavioral concept of stimulus substitution for stimuli that differ arbitrarily in multiple ways (i.e., multiple stimulus relations), the door may be opened for the entire RFT research program to yield (at least potentially) to interbehavioral field-based analyses.

A recent call has been made for a unified and detailed approach to demographic and methodological reporting in research with young children (Singh et al., Developmental Psychology, 60(2), 211-227, 2024). This need is especially relevant for infant research, because infants experience rapid developmental changes, cannot provide consent, and rely entirely on caregivers to meet their needs. Yet, although reporting practices in behavior-analytic studies have been reviewed more broadly, infant-focused behavioral studies have not been examined systematically. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines (Page et al., BMJ, 372, n71, 2021). We then used the guidelines described by Singh and colleagues to extract data on participant demographics (e.g., age, sex, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, language exposure, household composition) and methodological variables (e.g., selection criteria, recruitment, incentives, consent, ethics approval) from behavior-analytic studies conducted with infants aged 0-12 months. We found that demographic and methodological reporting varied from 100% (age) to 0% (birthplace). Given that infant-focused research is an expanding subdomain in behavior analysis, this is an appropriate time to establish clear reporting standards. We suggest that standardized reporting is necessary to ensure that infant research is not only representative but also appropriately replicable across relevant populations to provide accurate information for practice.

Researchers and practitioners have been urged to embrace cultural responsiveness to better design, implement, and evaluate treatment. We conducted a scoping review of the inclusion of cultural variables in the context of contingency management (CM) for the treatment of substance use disorder (SUD). We included articles that contained a discussion of at least one cultural variable in the context of CM related to SUD (e.g., race, ethnicity, age, generation, education, socioeconomic status, religion or spiritual beliefs, language, nationality, geographic location, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation). Results suggest that CM may be equally efficacious across sociodemographic categories, and racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities. However, few studies have examined other outcomes as a function of cultural variables, such as uptake, acceptability, adherence, and retention. Few studies have explicitly tailored CM based on cultural variables or compared tailored and nontailored versions of CM. Thus, more work is needed to understand whether and how cultural variables should be considered in contingency management for substance use disorder.