Behavior,process, and scale: Comments on Shimp (2020), “Molecular (moment-to-moment) and molar (aggregate) analyses of behavior”

If we study the behavior of organisms, we must understand the ontological status of both “organism” and “behavior.” A living organism maintains itself alive by constantly interacting with the environment, taking in energy and discarding waste. Ontologically, an organism is a process. Its interactions with the environment, which constitute its behavior, are processes also, because the parts of any process are themselves processes. Processes serve functions, and the function of a process must be part of its identity. A process, by definition, extends in time. Time is the fundamental and universal measure of behavior. All processes have the property of scale. Activities of an organism have parts that are themselves activities on a smaller time scale. Scale varies continuously, and behavior may be studied on as large or as small a time scale as seems necessary. When researchers refer to the “structure” of behavior, they refer to smaller-scale activities. Attaching a switch to a lever or key is convenient, but one should never confuse operation of a switch with a unit of behavior. Shimp's (2020) “molecular” measures are small-scale measures. The molecular view based on discrete events has outlived its usefulness and should be replaced by a multiscale molar paradigm.     

Quantitative prediction and molar description of the environment

Molecular explanations of behavior, based on momentary events and variables that can be measured each time an event occurs, can be contrasted with molar explanations, based on aggregates of events and variables that can be measured only over substantial periods of time. Molecular analyses cannot suffice for quantitative accounts of behavior, because the historical variables that determine behavior are inevitably molar. When molecular explanations are attempted, they always depend on hypothetical constructs that stand as surrogates for molar environmental variables. These constructs allow no quantitative predictions when they are vague, and when they are made precise, they become superfluous, because they can be replaced with molar measures. In contrast to molecular accounts of phenomena like higher responding on ratio schedules than interval schedules and free-operant avoidance, molar accounts tend to be simple and straightforward. Molar theory incorporates the notion that behavior produces consequences that in turn affect the behavior, the notion that behavior and environment together constitute a feedback system. A feedback function specifies the dependence of consequences on behavior, thereby describing properties of the environment. Feedback functions can be derived for simple schedules, complex schedules, and natural resources. A complete theory of behavior requires describing the environment's feedback functions and the organism's functional relations. Molar thinking, both in the laboratory and in the field, can allow quantitative prediction, the mark of a mature science.     

Reflexology,schizokinesis and autokinesis

A resume of the history and concepts culminating in the work of Pavlov shows that there has been a gradual and slow elaboration toward a science of behavior. The past work has been oriented since the time of Locke increasingly toward the external environment. Pavlov’s theories, however, were directed toward forceswithin the nervous system. Further work from the Pavlovian Laboratories at Johns Hopkins and the V.A. (and elsewhere) indicate that the various physiological systems do not always work harmoniously, but that there is often a split in function (Schizokinesis)—changes occurring over a period of time—which do not seem to be referable to the external environment but to elaborations occurringwithin the organism (Autokinesis). These may tend toward improvement of function or, on the other hand, toward deterioration. The time has come when the progressive changes and the interrelationships of active fociwithin the organism should be considered as well as the reactivity of the individual toward the external environment.     

From molecular to molar: a paradigm shift in behavior analysis

A paradigm clash is occurring within behavior analysis. In the older paradigm, the molecular view, behavior consists of momentary or discrete responses that constitute instances of classes. Variation in response rate reflects variation in the strength or probability of the response class. The newer paradigm, the molar view, sees behavior as composed of activities that take up varying amounts of time. Whereas the molecular view takes response rate and choice to be "derived" measures and hence abstractions, the molar view takes response rate and choice to be concrete temporally extended behavioral allocations and regards momentary "responses" as abstractions. Research findings that point to variation in tempo, asymmetry in concurrent performance, and paradoxical resistance to change are readily interpretable when seen in the light of reinforcement and stimulus control of extended behavioral allocations or activities. Seen in the light of the ontological distinction between classes and individuals, extended behavioral allocations, like species in evolutionary taxonomy, constitute individuals, entities that change without changing their identity. Seeing allocations as individuals implies that less extended activities constitute parts of larger wholes rather than instances of classes. Both laboratory research and everyday behavior are explained plausibly in the light of concrete extended activities and their nesting. The molecular- view, because it requires discrete responses and contiguous events, relies on hypothetical stimuli and consequences to account for the same phenomena. One may prefer the molar view on grounds of elegance, integrative power, and plausibility.     

A molar view of goal direction and habit

When we treat behavior within an evolutionary framework and as temporally extended flow, two fundamental questions arise: (a) What is an organism? and (b) What is behavior? An organism is a process that stays intact by constantly exchanging energy with the environment. It takes in resources and puts out waste. The behavior of an organism consists of those process parts of the organism process that make up the exchange. These activities serve the function of reproducing, which generally depends on surviving. Surviving and reproducing depend on responding to phylogenetically important events (PIEs). A PIE induces activities that enhance or mitigate the PIE. Organisms respond not only to a PIE but also to events that covary with the PIE. Both activities and environmental features may covary with a PIE. When either type of covariance is introduced to an organism, behavior adapts over time. The early stages of adaptation constitute what researchers call “goal direction,” and the later stages constitute what researchers call “habit.” Behavior and environment constitute a dynamic system, and manipulations of the covariances and environmental features of the system allow many experimental interventions. This molar approach allows experiments on goal direction and habit to be understood without appeal to everyday mentalistic terms.     

A local model of concurrent performance

Concurrent procedures may be conceptualized as consisting of two pairs of schedules with only one pair operating at a time. One schedule of each pair arranges reinforcers for staying in the current alternative, and the other schedule arranges reinforcers for switching to the other alternative. These pairs alternate operation as the animal switches between choices. This analysis of the contingencies suggests that variables operating within an alternative produce behavior that conforms to the generalized matching law. Rats were exposed to one pair of stay and switch schedules in each condition, and the probabilities of reinforcement varied across conditions. Both run length and visit duration were power functions of the ratio of the probabilities of reinforcement for staying and switching. The local model, a model of performance on concurrent procedures, was derived from this power function. Performance on concurrent schedules was synthesized from the performances on the separate pairs. Both the generalized matching law and the local model fitted the synthesized concurrent performances. These results are consistent with the view that the contingencies in the alternative, the probability of stay and switch reinforcement, are responsible for performance consistent with the generalized matching law. These results are compatible with momentary maximizing and molar maximizing accounts of concurrent performance. Models of concurrent performance that posit comparisons among the alternatives are not easily applied to these results.     

Hill-climbing by pigeons

Pigeons were exposed to two types of concurrent operant-reinforcement schedules in order to determine what choice rules determine behavior on these schedules. In the first set of experiments, concurrent variable-interval, variable-interval schedules, key-peck responses to either of two alternative schedules produced food reinforcement after a random time interval. The frequency of food-reinforcement availability for the two schedules was varied over different ranges for different birds. In the second series of experiments, concurrent variable-ratio, variable-interval schedules, key-peck responses to one schedule produced food reinforcement after a random time interval, whereas food reinforcement occurred for an alternative schedule only after a random number of responses. Results from both experiments showed that pigeons consistently follow a behavioral strategy in which the alternative schedule chosen at any time is the one which offers the highest momentary reinforcement probability (momentary maximizing). The quality of momentary maximizing was somewhat higher and more consistent when both alternative reinforcement schedules were time-based than when one schedule was time-based and the alternative response-count based. Previous attempts to provide evidence for the existence of momentary maximizing were shown to be based upon faulty assumptions about the behavior implied by momentary maximizing and resultant inappropriate measures of behavior.     

The “Brightening” Effect: Reactions to Positive Events in the Daily Lives of Individuals With Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Depressed individuals are less reactive than healthy individuals to positive stimuli in the laboratory, but accumulating evidence suggests that they are more emotionally reactive to positive events in their daily lives. The present study probed the boundaries of this curious “mood brightening” effect and investigated its specificity to major depressive disorder (MDD) vis-à-vis generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), its closest boundary condition. We used ecological momentary assessment to measure reactions to positive events over one week in individuals with MDD (n = 38), GAD (n = 36), comorbid MDD-GAD (n = 38), and no psychopathology (n = 33). Depressed individuals responded to positive events with larger changes in affect, cognition, reported withdrawal (but not approach) behavior, and symptoms than healthy controls. More severe depression assessed before the sampling week predicted greater brightening. Altered reactivity to positive events was relatively specific to MDD when compared with GAD, similar to patterns found for other positive emotional processes. The robustness, scope, and relative specificity of the brightening effect highlights the need to resolve conflicting findings across laboratory and non-laboratory studies to advance understanding of altered reactivity in emotional disorders.     

Momentary time sampling as an estimate of percentage time: A field validation

This study examined the percentage time estimates of momentary time sampling against the real time obtained with handheld computers in a natural setting. Twenty-two concurrent observations were conducted in elementary schools by one observer who used 15-s momentary time sampling and a second who used a handheld computer. Results for the six behaviors showed a close correspondence between the momentary time sampling percentage observation intervals and the real time percentage observation time, although 15-s momentary time sampling tended not to sample low-frequency short-duration behaviors. The results confirmed laboratory findings that short-interval momentary time sampling estimates percentage time accurately for a wide range of behavior frequencies and durations, and suggested that observers using momentary time sampling in a natural setting are able to obtain accurate data.     

Less negative=more positive? Social discrimination as avoidance or approach

A motivational approach to ingroup favoritism based on regulatory focus theory (RFT; Higgins, 1997) is introduced. RFT suggests that individual self-regulation is either more concerned with approaching positive events (promotion focus) or with avoiding negative events (prevention focus). It is suggested that if an individual self-categorizes as a group member, resource allocations to one’s group will be based on these mechanisms of self-regulation. Thus, a promotion focus should engender ingroup favoritism during the distribution of positive resources but not during the distribution of negative resources, whereas a prevention focus should engender ingroup favoritism for negative but not for positive resources. The results of two studies support this prediction based on momentary and chronic regulatory focus. The self-regulation approach to ingroup favoritism provides an explanation for social discrimination in the distribution of positive and negative resources.     

What Counts as Behavior? The Molar Multiscale View

Because the definition of behavior changes as our understanding of behavior changes, giving a final definition is impossible. One can, however, rule out some possibilities and propose some others based on what we currently know. Behavior is not simply movement, but must be defined by its function. Also, our understanding of behavior must agree with evolutionary theory. I suggest 4 basic principles: (a) only whole organisms behave; (b) behavior is purposive; (c) behavior takes time; and (d) behavior is choice. Saying that parts of an organism behave is nonsense, and, moreover, evolutionary theory explains the existence of organisms mainly through their adaptive behavior. Behavior is purposive in that behavior is shaped by its consequences, through an organism''s lifetime or through interactions with the environment across many generations of natural selection. Behavior takes time in that behavior is interaction with the environment that cannot take place at a moment. Moreover, at a moment in time, one cannot definitely identify the function of behavior. Identification of an activity requires a span of time. Behavior is choice in the sense that a suitable span of time always includes time spent in more than 1 activity. Activities include parts that are themselves activities on a smaller time scale and compete for time. Thus, behavior constitutes time allocation. An accounting problem arises whenever any behavior is attributed to multiple consequences. In the molar multiscale view, this raises the question of whether 2 activities can occur at the same time. The question remains open.     

The buffering role of sportsmanship on the effects of daily negative events

Affective events theory (AET) argues that everyday negative events are likely to lower both daily work engagement and momentary positive affect. These problems can then persist on subsequent days. However, AET also argues that individual strategies can diminish the ill effects of negative events. We explicitly focused on good sportsmanship or abstaining from unnecessary complaints and criticism as a possible moderator of the effects of daily negative work events on daily work engagement and positive affect. We tested this possibility with a 3-day diary study among 112 employees. As expected, we found that daily negative events lowered daily engagement and momentary positive affect for two consecutive days. However, this effect only held on days that people exhibited low sportsmanship. For days that people exhibited high sportsmanship, there were no significant effects. Creating a resource rich work environment that enhances individuals’ sportsmanship behaviour can help to minimize the unfavourable impact of daily negative events.     

Philosophical behaviorism: a review of things that happen because they should: a teleological approach to action, by Rowland Stout.

Mentalistic terms such as belief and desire have been rejected by behavior analysts because they are traditionally held to refer to unobservable events inside the organism. Behavior analysis has consequently been viewed by philosophers to be at best irrelevant to psychology, understood as a science of the mind. In this book, the philosopher Rowland Stout argues cogently that beliefs and desires (like operants such as rats' lever presses) are best understood in terms of an interaction over time between overt behavior and its overt consequences (a viewpoint called teleological behaviorism). This book is important because it identifies the science of the mind with the science of overt behavior and implies that the psychologists best equipped to study mental life are not those who purport to do so but those who focus on the experimental analysis of behavior.     

Interval recording for duration events: a re‐evaluation

In two experiments, events that were recorded using continuous duration recording (CDR) were rescored using 10‐s partial interval (PIR), 10‐s momentary time sampling (MTS) and 20‐s MTS. Results of Experiment 1 showed that data paths generated by each interval method produced conclusions about functional control that were similar to those based on CDR when using reversal designs; however, for multielement designs, 10‐s PIR was prone to showing differentiation between data paths that was not evident with CDR. Results of Experiment 2 showed that both 10‐s and 20‐s MTS yielded data paths on behavior–behavior relations (e.g., covarying responses) that were consistent with CDR whereas 10‐s PIR produced some behavior–behavior patterns that were not. In both experiments, 10‐s MTS generated data paths that were nearly identical to the respective CDR data paths. The implications of these findings for researchers and clinicians are briefly discussed. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Non-aging fore-periods and simple reaction time

This study deals with the relationship between the momentary objective probability of the delivery of a stimulus and the reaction time in a simple reaction-time task. The hypothesis was that the reaction time is closely related to the objective probability via expectancy i.e., the momentary probability of the delivery of the stimulus as experienced by the subject. This problem was experimentally approached from two directions: (1) by varying the objective probability, in which case the reaction times should change inversely with the objective probability, and (2) by keeping the objective probability constant (by using the Bernoulli process), in which case the reaction times should not change. Eight male subjects were used. The first assumption proved to be correct, whereas the second held only when certain mean inter-stimulus intervals were used.     

A descriptive taxonomy of environmental operations and its implications for behavior analysis

Environmental operations may be classified according to whether they have evocative or function-altering effects. Evocative events, such as the presentation of unconditioned and conditioned stimuli, establishing operations, and discriminative stimuli, serve to increase, decrease, or maintain the momentary frequency of behavior. Function-altering operations, such as operant and respondent conditioning, the correlation of stimuli, and the presentation of certain verbal stimuli, serve to increase, decrease, or maintain the evocative and function-altering (e.g., reinforcing or punishing) functions of other events. This paper expands upon the functional taxonomy of environmental events described by Michael (1993a). The resulting classification scheme should permit behavior analysts to more easily respond to similarities and differences between functional environmental events. This paper discusses implications of the suggested taxonomy for how behavior analysts talk about motivational variables, discriminative stimuli, the operant unit of analysis, and the distinction between operant and respondent conditioning.     

Symmetry-breaking dynamics in development

Recognition of the plasticity of development — from gene expression to neuroplasticity — is increasingly undermining the traditional distinction between structure and function, or anatomy and behavior. At the same time, dynamic systems theory — a set of tools and concepts drawn from the physical sciences — has emerged as a way of describing what Maurice Merleau-Ponty calls the “dynamic anatomy” of the living organism. This article surveys and synthesizes dynamic systems models of development from biology, neuroscience, and psychology in order to propose an integrated account of growth, learning, and behavior. Key to this account is the concept of self-differentiation or symmetry-breaking. I argue that development can be understood as a cascade of symmetry-breaking events brought about by the ongoing interactions of multiple, nested, nonlinear dynamic systems whose self-organizing behaviors gradually alter their own anatomical conditions. I begin by introducing the concept of symmetry-breaking as a way of understanding anatomical development. I then extend this approach to motor development by arguing that the organism’s behavior grows along with its body, like a new organ. Finally, I argue that the organism’s behavior and its world grow together dialectically, each driving the other to become more complex and asymmetrical through its own increasing asymmetry. Thus development turns out to be a form of cognition or sense-making, and cognition a form of development.     

Within-person association of volitional factors and physical activity: Insights from an ecological momentary assessment study

ObjectiveCurrent health behavior models of physical activity (PA) suggest that not all PA intentions are translated into actual PA behavior, resulting in a significant intention-behavior gap (IBG) of almost 50%. These models further suggest that higher self-efficacy and specific planning can aid in decreasing this gap. However, as most evidence stems from between-person (trait level), questionnaire-based research, it is unclear how large short-term IBGs are, how self-efficacy and planning covary within-persons across time and whether they similarly predict smaller IBGs. It is likely that day-to-day changes in circumstances and barriers affect these variables thus the applicability of theoretical models is uncertain. Here, within-person prospective analyses of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) data can provide insights.Methods35 healthy participants (aged 23–67) completed four EMA-based questionnaires every day for three weeks. Each prompt assessed PA (retrospectively, “since the last EMA prompt”); PA intentions, planning specificity, self-efficacy, and intrinsic motivation (prospectively, “until the next EMA prompt”) and momentary affect. Generalized logistic mixed-effect modeling was used to test predictors of PA.ResultsAcross the 2341 answered EMA prompts, PA intentions were not enacted in 25% of the episodes (IBG). In episodes with given intentions, PA likelihood increased with higher levels of self-efficacy, planning specificity, and intrinsic motivation. The latter two also positively predicted PA duration and intensity.ConclusionsShort-term intention behavior gaps seem to be smaller than what is known from more long-term studies, most likely as individuals can anticipate the actual circumstances of PA. Further, current health behavior models show validity in explaining within-person dynamics in IBGs across time. Knowing the relevance of planning specificity, self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation for day-to-day variations in PA enactment can inform respective real-time mHealth interventions for facilitating PA.     

An experimental analysis of impulsivity and impulse control in humans

In choosing between small, immediate and large, delayed reward, an organism behaves impulsively if it chooses the small reward and shows impulse control if it chooses the large reward. Work with nonhumans suggests that impulsivity and impulse control may be derived from gradients of delayed reinforcement. A model developed by Ainslie and by Rachlin suggests that preference for the rewards should be a function of when the choice is made: small reward with no delay may be preferred to large reward with delay X, but adding delay T to both alternatives should shift preference to the large reward. Three experiments investigated this preference reversal in humans, using termination of 90 dba white noise as the reinforcing event. Experiment 1 showed that under some instructional conditions 90-sec noise off with no delay was preferred over 120-sec noise off after a 60-sec delay, but that preference shifted to the large reward when a 15-sec delay (T) was added to both alternatives. Experiment 2 replicated this preference reversal under two conditions of large, delayed reward, and with three rather than two values of T. Experiment 3 confirmed this effect of T and showed that some humans committed themselves to the large reward when commitment could be made some time before presentation of the reward alternatives. These data support the Ainslie-Rachlin model and extend it to human choice behavior.