A cognitive behaviorist approach to the study of animal behavior

Traditional psychological approaches to animal learning and behavior have involved either the atheoretical behaviorist approach proposed by B. F. Skinner (1938), in which input-output relations are described in response to environmental manipulations, or the theoretical behaviorist approach offered by C. L Hull (1943), in which associations mediated by several hypothetical constructs and intervening variables are formed between stimuli and responses. Recently, the application of a cognitive behaviorist approach to animal learning and behavior has been found to have considerable value as a research tool. This perspective has grown out of E. C. Tolman's cognitive approach to learning in which behavior is mediated by mechanisms that are not directly observable but can be inferred from the results of critical experiments. In the present article, the author presents several examples of the successful application of the cognitive behaviorist approach. In each case, the experiments have been designed to distinguish between more traditional mechanisms and those mediated by hypothesized internal representations. These examples were selected because the evidence suggests that some form of active cognitive organization is needed to account for the behavioral results.     

W. I. Thomas,behaviorist ethnologist

Over the course of his academic career in the anthropology wing of the University of Chicago's Department of Sociology and Anthropology, W. I. Thomas rejected the influence of Herbert Spencer, became skeptical of the instinctual explanations for human behavior, and became increasingly Boasian. His study of Polish peasant acculturation to American cities is Boasian in its focus on texts and on culture. After his dismissal by the University of Chicago in 1918 Thomas was influenced by John B. Watson. In the national interdisciplinary conferences of the 1920s, Thomas was an advocate for behaviorism and critical of Freudian doctrines and other subjectivist approaches to human science. Recalling Thomas's behaviorism and his long-running interest in comparing cross-cultural data should call into question the enlistment of Thomas as a father of subjectivist traditions of symbolic interactionism.     

Radical behaviorist interpretation: Generating and evaluating an account of consumer behavior

This article considers an approach to the radical behaviorist interpretation of complex human social behavior. The chosen context is consumer psychology, a field currently dominated by cognitive models of purchase and consumption. The nature of operant interpretation is considered, and several levels of operant analysis of complex economic behavior in affluent marketing-oriented economies are developed. Empirical evidence for the interpretation is considered, and a case is made for the qualified use of the hypothetico-deductive method in the appraisal of operant interpretations of complex behaviors.     

Evaluation of a shaping procedure with the changing-criterion design

This study used the changing-criterion design to document the effectiveness of a behavioral training package to alter the topography of a complex behavior. In this case, bed-making was established for a severely debilitated adult mental patient who was chronically institutionalized. Experimental control was demonstrated by a step-wise progression in performance to the final target behavior. The changing-criterion design provides an effective record of the shaping process and is sufficiently flexible for other single-subject design elements to be included.     

Psychoanalysis as a creative shaping process2

The author first explains the concepts of creativity, play and aesthetic experience. He then outlines the psychoanalytic process as a creative one that shapes reality. Making a link between psychoanalysis and the humanities, he demonstrates that creative play is a fundamental aspect of the human experience of reality. Aesthetic experiences during the psychoanalytic process are comparable to the play by which children structure their world and artists' activity in following their urge to shape. Furthermore it is shown that creative actualisation testifies to a quasi‐biological need for coherence and structure. Through modern hermeneutics, the truth claims of aesthetic shaping can be established in epistemological terms. The basic principles of hermeneutics‐historicity, linguisticity and communicative experience‐find their psychoanalytic counterparts in memory, representational shaping and transference‐countertransference. Psychoanalysis is demonstrated to be simultaneously a science and an art. On the basis of a case history, aesthetic experience is shown to constitute a specific and unique form of access to psychic reality. Aesthetic experience and creativity do not only aid recovery from ‘bad psychological states’, they are also indispensable for the entire understanding of internal and external reality. It is possible to develop this understanding through a creative psychoanalytic attitude.     

Reinforcement of behavioral patterns: shaping a scallop

Temporal patterns of key pecking by pigeons were shaped by a schedule in which the delivery of food was contingent upon a measure of the overall extent to which the temporal pattern of behavior within a 5-sec trial conformed to a required pattern. This pattern approximated a constant rate of change in the rate of key pecking throughout the 5-sec trial. In comparison with behavior maintained by a classical fixed-interval 5-sec schedule, the new schedule controlled a better approximation to a "scallop" within individual trials and greatly reduced intersubject variability. These results are consistent with the view that the delivery of a reinforcer after a behavioral pattern a few seconds in duration may strengthen the entire pattern as a unit, or operant. The response topography contiguous with reinforcement may be a negligible fraction of the strengthened operant. One implication of this view is that mean response rate for such brief responses as key pecks and lever presses is a byproduct of whatever patterns are strengthened, and generally will not reveal fundamental controlling relationships, whenever a reinforcer is not contiguous with all the behavior on which it is contingent.     

An auto-adjusting shaping procedure

A variable interval (VI) schedule is described that automatically adjusts the programmed rates of reinforcement in accordance with the rates of responding of subjects during the two immediately preceding 30-sec time intervals. The schedule prescribes that as rate of responding decreases, programmed reinforcement rate increases, and that when rate of responding increases, reinforcement rate decreases. Thus, programmed reinforcement rate is adjusted continuously until some target value is reached. Ten rats were exposed to this procedure five times a day at 1-h intervals. The target, set at VI 120 sec, was reached by most subjects within 4 days of training. Subsequently, all subjects responded consistently during five daily 1-h sessions with VI 120 sec. This procedure speeds up the training of subjects on long VI schedules and substantially reduces the time and effort spent observing the subjects and adjusting the schedule parameter value during the early development of responding.     

Factors shaping biblical literalism: a study among Anglican laity

Biblical literalism was assessed among 404 adult Anglicans from a variety of church traditions using a summated rating scale based on 10 items referring to events in the Bible. The literalism scale showed high internal reliability (α?=?.92) and scores were highest (i.e. most literal) in Evangelical churches, intermediate in Broad churches and lowest in Anglo‐Catholic churches. Decisions about whether or not an event happened appeared to be based on a combination of general doctrinal belief about the Bible, the plausibility of the event and the doctrinal weight associated with it. A number of different factors predicted the degree of literalism, including general educational experience, experience of theological education at certificate level or higher, charismatic experience and the frequency of reading the Bible. Both general and specifically theological higher education seemed to reduce literalism in Anglo‐Catholic and Broad churches, but this was not so among Evangelicals, who maintained high levels of literalism whatever their educational experience.