superficial analyses that are incapable of dealing with difficult issues involving, for
example, mind and personality. Similarly, the technical achievements of behavior analysis
and applied behavior analysis could have been found by applying common sense alone.
Behavior analysis is, therefore, oversimplified, naive, and trivial: It merely states much of
what we already know and sheds little or no new light on basic or applied issues.
Clarification: Questions of (a) oversimplification/superficiality and (b) technical
achievements will be addressed separately.
*Oversimplification. Charges of oversimplification and superficiality sometimes
result from misunderstandings regarding the meaning of "behavior". It is often said that
behavior analysts study "only" behavior while others study "more than" behavior. This
misrepresentation stems from an overly restricted definition of behavior that is not used by
behavior analysts. For them, "behavior" denotes what people do in the broad sense of
"do": Publicly observable behavior and private events like thinking, perception, feelings,
etc. Nothing people do is left out (see note 1). In short, all approaches to psychology and
education begin with:
(a) The same dependent variable--behavior
(b) The same independent variable--the conditions under which the behavior is
established, maintained, and eliminated.
Therefore behavior analysis is hardly superficial and, because it does explain the dependent
variables (behaviors) of interest to everyone, it resists charges of oversimplification.
Besides overly restrictive definitions of behavior, charges of oversimplification and
superficiality can result from misunderstandings regarding theoretical terms. For example,
hypothetical constructs from deductive models can be reified and, because behavior
analysts don't use that vocabulary, their account is deemed superficial.
Several points can clarify this misrepresentation regarding terms:
#1. Hypothetical constructs refer to behavior and sometimes the conditions under
which behavior occurs. So stripped of reified terms, deductive models emerge with the
same physiological, stimulus, and response referents as behavior analysis. In short,
behavior analysis is a more direct way of talking about the variables that concern
individuals from all orientations.
#2. Behaviorists generally agree that superficial explanations are those that cast
hypothetical constructs as a cause and then fail to explain the construct. For example, a
developmentalist may argue that a child' s sexuality results from his/her concept of what it
means to be a boy or girl. The behaviorist criticism of such an argument typically takes
two forms:
(a) "Concept" here explains nothing. The key issue is the conditions under
which a child acquires the behaviors we call "sexuality". These conditions are external to
the child--in his/her environment--not a mental event called concept, schema, or other
organizational metaphor. To explain the behavior that defines "sexuality" requires
describing how that individual's history generated those behaviors.
(b) The use of "concept" illustrates how an explanatory fiction works:
*First, behavior is observed
* Second, a mentalistic-sounding cause is invented (not discovered)
to explain it
*Third, explanation stops--the conditions under which the behavior
developed still are not specified, so we still know nothing about whythe child behaved in
certain ways.
The pseudoexplanations in (a) and (b) illustrate what behavior analysts would call
"superficial", "oversimplified" and circular.
In summary, the charge of superficiality is met by pointing out that:
(a) Behavior analysis addresses all relevant independent and dependent variables
but does so without reification or references to non-material mental events.
(b) The apparent "depth" of models employing mentalistic and phenomenological-
sounding constructs typically results from reification or lay--not operational--definitions of
these terms.
A successful charge of superficiality or oversimplification would require identifying
behaviors that behavior analysis cannot explain in principle or in practice. This has not
been done.
*Technical achievements and common sense. Consider three of many possible
counterpoints to the argument that the success of applied behavior analysis could have
been achieved with common sense alone:
#1. Behavior analysis discovered heretofore unknown phenomena such as
schedules of reinforcement, which completely eluded common sense and cognitive models.
These schedules have become important in all areas of experimental and applied
psychology and education. A small sampling of other important phenomena clarified by
behavior analysts includes stimulus equivalence's role in reading, vocabulary development,
stimulus control, academics and analysis of concepts; contingency adduction's function in
problem solving and insight; reinforcement's use in biofeedback and pain control; and
many more examples than space here allows.
#2. The indices of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Behavioral
Assessment, Behavior Therapy, Behavior Modification, Journal fo Behavioral Education,
Child and Family Behavior Therapy, Education and Treatment of Children and others
describe the many successful tactics that go beyond the offerings of common sense and
cognitive models
#3. Common sense tactics failed where behavior analysis was successful. For
example, in Let Me Hear Your Voice, author and parent of autistic children Catherine
Maurice describes her long journey through failed common sense advice, medical
interventions, and educational practices before finding effective solutions in applied
behavior analysis. At Morningside Academy in Seattle, Washington, children who
repeatedly failed in school typically progress two to four times the typical rate expected in
public schools (where "common sense" techniques are lauded) and many of Morningside's
students progress at over 5 to 10 times the pace of their previous educational training.
Many similar examples can be found in clinical psychology, education, industry, and other
areas.
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Note 1: Interestingly, the cognitive psychologists using operational definitions requiring
strict public verification were responsible for excluding private events that were retained
in Skinner's radical behaviorism. See B.F. Skinner's About Behaviorism (1974, Vintage
Books) and these:
Jay
Moore (1985). On behaviorism and private events. The PsychologicalRecord, 30, 459-475.
Jay
Moore (1985). Some historical and conceptual relations among logicalpositivism, operationalism, and behaviorism. The Behavior Analyst, 8, 53-63.