Science and Human Behavior: a tutorial in behavior analysis

B. F. Skinner's Science and Human Behavior (1953) became the main source of my understanding of behavior during my first semester as a college professor in 1955 at Kansas University. It has continued to exert a major influence throughout my career as the basis for a completely deterministic science of behavior, as a handbook to be consulted as a first step in dealing with any issue in behavior analysis, and as a tutorial in behavioral interpretive analysis--in the use of a small number of behavioral concepts and principles to understand behavior of all degrees of complexity. I describe four general interpretive orientations or maxims that are of broad significance for behavior analysis, and also two underappreciated major theoretical contributions.     

The Recruitment of Shifting and Inhibition in On‐line Science and Mathematics Tasks

Prior research has investigated the recruitment of inhibition in the use of science/mathematics concepts in tasks that require the rejection of a conflicting, nonscientific initial concept. The present research examines if inhibition is the only EF skill recruited in such tasks and investigates whether shifting is also involved. It also investigates whether inhibition and/or shifting are recruited in tasks in which the use of science/mathematics concepts does not require the rejection of an initial concept, or which require only the use of initial concepts. One hundred and thirty‐three third‐ and fifth‐grade children participated in two inhibition and shifting tasks and two science and mathematics conceptual understanding and conceptual change (CU&C) tasks. All the tasks were on‐line, and performance was measured in accuracy and RTs. The CU&C tasks involved the use of initial concepts and of science/mathematics concepts which required conceptual changes for their initial formation. Only in one of the tasks the use of the science/mathematics concepts required the concurrent rejection of an initial concept. The results confirmed that in this task inhibition was recruited and also showed that the speed of shifting was a significant predictor of performance. Shifting was a significant predictor of performance in all the tasks, regardless of whether they involved science/mathematics or initial concepts. It is argued that shifting is likely to be recruited in complex tasks that require multiple comparisons of stimuli and the entertainment of different perspectives. Inhibition seems to be a more selective cognitive skill likely to be recruited when the use of science/mathematics concepts requires the rejection of a conflicting initial concept.     

Awe as a Scientific Emotion

Awe has traditionally been considered a religious or spiritual emotion, yet scientists often report that awe motivates them to answer questions about the natural world, and to do so in naturalistic terms. Indeed, awe may be closely related to scientific discovery and theoretical advance. Awe is typically triggered by something vast (either literally or metaphorically) and initiates processes of accommodation, in which existing mental schemas are revised to make sense of the awe‐inspiring stimuli. This process of accommodation is essential for the kind of belief revision that characterizes scientific reasoning and theory change. Across six studies, we find that the tendency to experience awe is positively associated with scientific thinking, and that this association is not shared by other positive emotions. Specifically, we show that the disposition to experience awe predicts a more accurate understanding of how science works, rejection of creationism, and rejection of unwarranted teleological explanations more broadly.     

You Get What You Need: An Examination of Purpose‐Based Inheritance Reasoning in Undergraduates,Preschoolers, and Biological Experts

This set of seven experiments examines reasoning about the inheritance and acquisition of physical properties in preschoolers, undergraduates, and biology experts. Participants (N = 390) received adoption vignettes in which a baby animal was born to one parent but raised by a biologically unrelated parent, and they judged whether the offspring would have the same property as the birth or rearing parent. For each vignette, the animal parents had contrasting values on a physical property dimension (e.g., the birth parent had a short tail; the rearing parent had a long tail). Depending on the condition, the distinct properties had distinct functions (“function‐predictive”) were associated with distinct habitats (“habitat‐predictive”), or had no implications (“non‐predictive”). Undergraduates' bias to view properties as inherited from the birth parent was reduced in the function‐ and habitat‐predictive conditions. This result indicates a purpose‐based view of inheritance, whereby animals can acquire properties that serve a purpose in their environment. This stance was not found in experts or preschoolers. We discuss the results in terms of how undergraduates' purpose‐based inheritance reasoning develops and relates to larger‐scale misconceptions about Darwinian evolutionary processes, and implications for biology education.     

Constructive criticism: An evaluation of Buller and Hardcastle's genetic and neuroscientific arguments against Evolutionary Psychology

David Buller and Valerie Hardcastle have argued that various discoveries about the genetics and nature of brain development show that most “central” psychological mechanisms cannot be adaptations because the nature of the contribution from the environment on which they are based shows they are not heritable. Some philosophers and scientists have argued that a strong role for the environment is compatible with high heritability as long as the environment is highly stable down lineages. In this paper I support this view by arguing that the discoveries Buller and Hardcastle refer to either do not show as strong a role for the environment as they suggest, or these discoveries show that the brain's developmental process depends in many cases on input from the environment that is highly stable across generations.     

Why there might be a moral faculty: A reply to Johnson

Is there a cognitive faculty dedicated to the moral domain? Mark Johnson has developed a number of arguments against the existence of such a faculty. I claim that these arguments are not persuasive and that there may be a moral faculty.     

The myth of the moral faculty: Response to Kirkby

David Kirkby argues that I have misrepresented Marc Hauser's conception of a moral faculty, in a way that invalidates my chief arguments against the existence and necessity of such a faculty. The core of Kirkby's challenge is that what Hauser lists as necessary conditions for the moral faculty to do its work are not themselves components of that faculty. I argue that there is no useful way to distinguish necessary conditions of moral judgments from the alleged moral faculty itself, and that even if we could do this, we would be left with an empty non-explanation of the supposed moral faculty that amounts to nothing more than the claim that we have a faculty that generates judgments of right versus wrong.     

Does testing with feedback help grade-school children learn key concepts in science?

Testing effects have been well-established across a variety of studies involving school-age children. Specifically, children's test performance improves when they are given the opportunity to practice retrieval prior to the final test as compared to when practice involves only study. The current investigation focused on the influence of testing with feedback on fifth graders’ learning of science concepts. Across two experiments, 65 students studied twenty key concept definitions. After study, the definitions were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: control, test only, study only, and test plus feedback. Concepts assigned to the latter three conditions were presented again (either for test only, study only, or test plus feedback) during two separate sessions, and a final test was administered during a separate session. At the final test, students were asked to provide the definition for each of the twenty key concepts. Final test performance was best for definitions that had been tested with feedback, followed by recall for those that had only been tested or only restudied, with lowest performance for those that did not receive additional practice. Despite multiple sessions spaced across several days, however, performance for all conditions was low, which may have resulted from the ineffective use of feedback. In summary, testing followed by feedback can boost younger students learning of science concepts, but mastery will require the use of other strategies as well.     

Anthropocentric by Default? Attribution of Familiar and Novel Properties to Living Things

Humans naturally and effortlessly use a set of cognitive tools to reason about biological entities and phenomena. Two such tools, essentialist thinking and teleological thinking, appear to be early developmental cognitive defaults, used extensively in childhood and under limited circumstances in adulthood, but prone to reemerge under time pressure or cognitive load. We examine the nature of another such tool: anthropocentric thinking. In four experiments, we examined patterns of property attribution to a wide range of living and non‐living objects, manipulating time pressure, response type, and property (either novel or familiar) in a total of 471 participants. Results showed no tendency toward increased similarity‐based attribution patterns indicative of anthropocentric thinking under time pressure. However, anthropocentric thinking was consistently observed for unfamiliar properties. These findings suggest that anthropocentric thinking is not a developmentally persistent cognitive default, but rather a cognitive strategy deliberately employed in situations of uncertainty.     

CAN SCIENCE AND RELIGION RESPOND TO CLIMATE CHANGE?

With the challenge of communicating climate science in the United States and making progress in international negotiations on climate change there is a need for other approaches. The moral issues of ecological degradation and climate justice need to be integrated into social consciousness, political legislation, and climate treaties. Both science and religion can contribute to this integration with differentiated language but shared purpose. Recognizing the limits of both science and religion is critical to finding a way forward for addressing the critical challenges of climate change. How we value nature and human–Earth relations is crucial to this. We need a broader environmental ethics in dialogue with the science of climate change.