Concept
Experimental analysis of behavior
Overview
The experimental analysis of behavior is a science that studies the behavior of individuals across a variety of species. A key early scientist was B. F. Skinner who discovered operant behavior, reinforcers, secondary reinforcers, contingencies of reinforcement, stimulus control, shaping, intermittent schedules, discrimination, and generalization. A central method was the examination of functional relations between environment and behavior, as opposed to hypothetico-deductive learning theory that had grown up in the comparative psychology of the 1920–1950 period. Skinner's approach was characterized by observation of measurable behavior which could be predicted and controlled. It owed its early success to the effectiveness of Skinner's procedures of operant conditioning, both in the laboratory and in behavior therapy.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
What was inapplicable in the assumptions of the physician falls away during the course of the analysis; it must be withdrawn and replaced by something more nearly correct. By employing a careful technique we seek to prevent the occurrence of temporary results arising out of suggestion, yet there is no harm if such temporary results occur, for we are never satisfied with early successes. We do not consider the…
Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Close in meaning to Experimental analysis of behavior; the term itself is not named.
For the experimental or _a posteriori_ part of this process, the materials are continually accumulating by the observation of mankind. So far as thought is concerned, the great problem of Ethology is to deduce the requisite middle principles from the general laws of Psychology.
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
Close in meaning to Experimental analysis of behavior; the term itself is not named.
No general description of the methods of experimental psychology would be instructive to one unfamiliar with the instances of their application, so we will waste no words upon the attempt. _The principal fields of experimentation_ so far have been: 1) the connection of conscious states with their physical conditions, including the whole of brain-physiology, and the recent minutely cultivated physiology of the…
William James, The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1
Close in meaning to Experimental analysis of behavior; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Operant conditioning
- Behavioral economics
- Sociology
- Classical conditioning
- Linguistics
- Political science
- Radical behaviorism
- B. F. Skinner
- Verbal Behavior
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Behaviorism.
Explore Experimental analysis of behavior in the interactive graph →