Zusammenfassung der Ressource
THE LEGACY OF JOHN B. WATSON’S
BEHAVIORIST MANIFESTO FOR APPLIED
BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS
- Watson’s Legacy: Applied Behavior Analysis
- As for applied behavior analysis, Baer et al. (1968) described its seven dimensions in the following
order: The field “must be applied, behavioral, and analytic. In addition, it should be technological,
conceptually systematic, and effective, and it should display some generality.
- “Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a
purely objective experimental branch of
natural science”
- its legacy for the latter’s conceptual
systems dimension.
- The Conceptual Systems Dimension: Naturalism
- listed this dimension fifth among the seven dimensions of
applied behavior analysis. By then, behavior analysis was
psychology’s leading neobehaviorism and well-enough
established as a system that other dimensions were more
important for founding applied behavior analysis
- did not specify a particular system, it was Skinner’s
- They referred only to operant principles (e.g.,
reinforcement), operant processes (e.g., fading),
and operant concepts
- Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It
- His article did not defend naturalism so much as
criticize the psychology of consciousness and advance
the psychology of behavior, as follows.
- The psychology of consciousness.
- In both cases, consciousness was their subject matter,
but not, in both cases, what they studied
- In the first psychology of consciousness, human consciousness was
psychology’s only subject matter and what it studied through
introspection
- Structuralism studied conscious states and their
elements, in particular, sensations, feelings, and
images. Functionalism studied conscious processes, for
instance, sensing, thinking, and remembering
- They were dualistic in assuming
that consciousness existed
independent of behavior
- In the second psychology of consciousness,
consciousness was psychology’s subject matter, but
not what it studied. It studied behavior for
methodological reasons: Consciousness could not
be objectively defined, directly observed, or
accurately and reliably measured
- The psychology of behavior
- The psychology of behavior
Watson (1913b) advanced also
came in two varieties
- In both, behavior was their subject
matter and what they studied, but
for different reasons
- Watson’s (1913b) methodological behaviorism did not
deny the existence of consciousness. As he wrote in
his introductory paragraph, “Introspection forms no
essen‑ tial part of [psychology’s] methods, nor is the
scientific value of its data dependent on the readiness
with which they lend themselves to interpretations in
terms of consciousness”
- The Behavioral Dimension:
Objectivity
- listed the behavioral dimension second
among the seven dimensions of applied
behavior analysis
- However, he did not use the term behavioral, but instead, the term,
objective: “Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely
objective experimental branch of natural science
- The Behavioral Dimension
- usually studies what subjects can be brought to do rather than what
they can be brought to say; unless, of course, a verbal response is of
interest. Accordingly a subject’s verbal description of his own
non-verbal behavior usually would not be accepted as a measure of
his actual behavior unless it were independently substantiated