Behaviorism, Autism, and Procrastination

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DickMalott.com: Information on behaviorism, autism, procrastination, higher education, OBM, undergraduate school, graduate school and much more

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Behaviorism

Articles and information:

Articles: Operant Learning and Selectionism: Risks and Benefits of Seeking Interdisciplinary Parallels
Seeking parallels among disciplines can have both risks and benefits. Finding parallels may be a vacuous exercise in categorization, generating no new insights. And pointing to analogous functions may cause us to treat them as homologous. Hull, Langman, and Glenn, (2001) have provided a basis for the generation of insights in different selectionist areas, without confusing analogy with homology. More...

Articles: A Commentary on Development, SDs, and EOs
We should beware of operational redefinitions of mentalistic, reified terms, and connotationally loaded terms, like behavioral development. And we should beware of confusions between SDs and EOs.Here’s the problem with operational redefinitions of mentalistic and reified terms: The original meaning of those terms still controls most of the behavior of most of the users, in spite of the operational redefinition. More...

Articles: In Search of Cumulative-Hierarchical Learning
Yes, we can say, CRF is really FR 1 (we can say, continuous reinforcement is really fixed ratio reinforcement where the ratio of response per reinforcer is 1 to 1). But if such labeling is not a reduction to absurdity, it’s at least a reduction to triviality. Continuous reinforcement shares none of the properties of fixed ratio reinforcement, such as the pause after reinforcement followed by the rapid acceleration of responding up to a hell-bent-for-leather, maximum rate. Continuous reinforcement does not capture the spirit, the essence, of fixed-ratio reinforcement. More...

Articles: Saving the World with Behavioral Comunitarianism: Los Horcones
Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, four hours south of the boarder. Population 600,000. And they’re all Mexican. And not one of them Mexicans has the decency to speak English. Six P.M. and dark’s coming fast. Strangers in a strange land. An RV park’s supposed to be around here somewhere. But so’s Los Horcones. Peggy’s concerned. What is Los Horcones? It’s a behavioristic commune a handful of 20-year-old Mexican hippies started 5 or 6 years ago, somewhere out there in the dessert. More...

Articles: A History of the Association for Behavior Analysis
As it is now, so it was in the early 70’s: The Midwest was a behavior-analytic stronghold. But few behavior analysts could get their papers accepted by the Midwestern Psychological Association (MPA). For example, MPA rejected the presentations of notable, productive behavior-analytic scholars like Travis Thompson. As it turned out, the MPA program committee had an explicit policy of rejecting behavior-analytic presentations. True, we could always present at the annual conferences of the Eastern Psychological Association (EPA), the American Psychological Association (APA), the Psychonomic Society, and the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy (AABT). But we couldn’t present in our own backyard, MPA, which met in Chicago. More...

Articles: The Johnson and Malott Dialogue on Sexuality
Ok, so you propose a basic, simple behavior analytic model that one’s sexual orientation is a function of one’s particular social reinforcement history. More...

Articles: The Three-Contingency Model of Performance Management Applied to Welfare Reform
The three-contingency model of performance management suggests contingencies that could provide an effective basis for welfare reform. This model also suggests an analysis of the performance-management contingencies of traditional efforts at welfare reform; and, in turn, that analysis suggests such traditional reform will not effectively increase functional behavior such as job finding nor decrease dysfunctional behavior such as drug abuse. This article is inspired by Nevin’s (1999) analysis of welfare reform. More...

Articles: Conceptual Behavior Analysis
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by lust for the straight semi-log transform, drilling ever deeper into the void of free-operant chaos, who floating across everyday life, attempted to perfectly fit the new king-- autistic child, striking worker, deciding executive, forcing the cool babe of conceptual analysis down the drain with the hypothetico-deductive bath water of mentalism, eager to justify, confusing analog with homologue, functional equivalent with fundamental equivalent, justifying the Skinner box in terms of applications, the applications in terms of the Skinner box. This commentary addresses three issues concerning the excellent argument of Normand, Bucklin, and Austin (1998): the lack of conceptual analyses, the importance of conceptual analyses, and the difficulty of conceptual analyses. More...

Articles: Comments on the Dissemination of Behavioral Technology
A concern about dissemination of behavioral technology results from a concern about the limited impact of behavior analysis. Before looking at the impact of behavior analysis on the world of action, let us first look at its impact on the world of ideas, if you will pardon my dualism. It would be of interest to get a historical perspective on how much impact behavior analysis has had. In doing so, we should keep in mind its recent emergence, its small number of participants, and the small amount of resources that have been devoted to it. Are we behind, ahead of, or at the same level as other disciplines at a comparable stage of their development? More...

Article: Biological Determinism
Biological determinism vs. behavior analysis--the battle for the soul of psychology. Behavior analysis is more than a technology; it is also a world view that can help us understand the human condition far beyond the Skinner box. However, political expedience in some contexts causes us to violate that world view and drift down the genome strewn path to intellectual shallowness, in ways we would never consider in other contexts. Is biology really destiny? Or is the gene the last refuge of scoundrels and the intellectually lazy? More...

Chapter: Determinism
Lawfulness of behavior means that behavior is the result of some condition that has caused it to happen. The occurence of a causal factor would tend to produce the same result each time. Some factor or factors are responsible for the behavior. Does that mean that nothing we do is spontaneous? If by spontaneous we mean uncaused, then it is true that as far as we know, no behavior is, technically speaking, spontaneous. The idea of causality of behavior is difficult to accept. More...

Chapter: Determinism and Freedom
Skinner's critics are particularly disturbed by determinism and conditioning; or as Andrew Hacker put it, by the Specter of Predictable Man. While most of the critics acknowledge that all men are affected by their environment, they feel there is a difference between being conditioned through conscious manipulation and being influenced in an unplanned, accidental way. More...

Autism

Articles and information:

Information: Psychology 357: Autism Croyden Practicum at WMU
We help college students get experience using behavior analysis to teach children diagnosed with autism utilizing discrete-trial training and informal incidental teachings. This practicum also fulfills the requirements for practicum experience for the Psychology Department undergraduate curriculum. (Practicum with Special Populations). More...

Articles: Autistic Behavior, Behavior Analysis, and the Gene
This article addresses the meaning of autism, the etiology of autistic behavior and values, the nature-nurture debate, contingencies vs. genes, and resistance to a behavioral analysis of autism. I am a radical, fanatical behavior analyst who thinks he knows everything there is to know about the use and misuse of reinforcement contingencies. Two semesters ago, I started working with a beautiful, non-verbal 4-year-old boy in the preschool autism classroom at Croyden Avenue School—my first hands-on experience with these kids. And like all my students who do their practica there, I fell in love with my child. More...

Articles: Autistic Behavior, Behavior Analysis, and the Gene - Comments on Malott's Comments

Articles: Autistic Behavior, Behavior Analysis, and the Gene—Part II
This article reviews the negative behavior-analytic commentary on Drash and Tudor’s behavior-analytic analysis of the etiology of autistic repertoires and values. This article also asks that, in our effort to scrub it clean, we not drown Drash and Tudor’s beautiful, but fragile, new-born, behavior-analytic baby in hyper-methodological, hyper-scholarly bathwater. More...

Articles: A Brief History of Behavior Analysis and Autism
Applied behavior analysis and autism are an amazing couple. Over 30 years ago, a clinical psychologist did some time at the University of Washington, the source of most of the early research on applied behavior analysis. Inspired and informed by his Washington training, the clinician went to LA and put his own spin on behavior analysis, as he started working with children whose behavioral repertoires had so many deficits of functional behavior and so many excesses of dysfunctional behavior that they were labeled autistic. He didn’t do anything new, except possibly disregard all of his education in traditional clinical psychology. All he did was apply train-ing procedures that had been in use for many years in the basic behavior-analysis research labs—procedures whose effectiveness had been well documented in peer-reviewed scientific publications. More...

Articles: Is it Morally Defensible to Use the Developmentally Disabled as Guinea Pigs?
Others have argued that we can justify the developmentally disabled spending some of their time as research subjects by considering it part of the tuition they pay. And we might make the same argument for college sophomores in Introductory Psych when they serve as subjects; however, we are obligated to provide the sophomores with an educationally valuable debriefing, in return for their participation. But I don't think the developmentally disabled get such an exchange. And often the institution doesn't get any pay off either. Now I'm somewhat sympathetic with the problems of the basic researcher in this area; they may simply have nothing to offer the individual or the institution, and yet science must march on. But we might say that for every hour the developmentally disabled individual gives the researcher in the name of science, the researcher should give one hour to the individual in the name of one-on-one therapy or training. More...

Artigo: Comportamento Autista, Análise do Comportamento, e o Gene
Este artigo aborda o significa de autismo, a etiologia do comportamento e dos valores autistas, o debate natureza-criação, contingências x genes, e a resistência a uma análise comportamental do autismo.Eu sou um behaviorista radical e fanático que acha que sabe tudo que há para se saber sobre o uso e o mal-uso das contingências de reforçamento. Dois semestres atrás, eu comecei a trabalhar com um belo garoto não-verbal de 4 anos em uma turma de autismo da pré-escola na Croyden Avenue School – a primeira vez que eu pus a mão na massa com estas crianças. E como todos meus alunos que fazem sua prática lá, eu me apaixonei por minha criança. Mas...

Articles: Preventing Autism Now: A Possible Next Step for Behavior Analysis
Applied Behavior Analysis is now recognized nationwide by many professionals and parents as the most effective form of treatment for autism (Lovaas, 1987;, Smith, & Lovaas, 1993; Maurice, Green, & Luce, 1996). However, Behavior Analysis as a profession has had relatively limited involvement in or impact on the national movement for the prevention of autism. Most individual behavior analysts and ABA programs have limited their intervention efforts primarily to children with an established diagnosis of autism. The prevention initiative is, at present, largely dominated by the biomedical professions. In view of the remarkable success that ABA has had in the environmental/behavioral approach to the treatment of autism, it is reasonable to ask why behavior analysis as a profession has not had greater involvement in prevention/earlier intervention research in autism. There are at least two factors that may have contributed to this relative lack of involvement. First, many, if not most, behavior analysts appear to have tacitly accepted the neurobiological model regarding the etiology of autism. That model states that autism is primarily a genetic or neurological disorder (Dykens & Volkmar, 1997, p. 388). As such, it would be relatively if not completely unresponsive to behavioral efforts to prevent the disorder. Behavioral researchers who view autism as a neurological disorder would, therefore, have little incentive to engage in prevention research. Moreover, as observed by Sundberg (2004) there has been an almost complete lack of discussion and research regarding the possible role of environmental, i. e. behavioral, factors in the development of autism. This is, he concludes, largely due to the parental backlash against the misguided views of Bettleheim (1967). More...

An Analysis of Autism as a Contingency-Shaped Disorder of Verbal Behavior
This paper analyzes autism as a contingency-shaped disorder of verbal behavior. Contingencies of reinforcement in effect during the first to third year of a child's life may operate to establish and maintain those behaviors that later result in a diagnosis of autism. While neurobiological variables may, in some cases, predispose some children to be more or less responsive to environmental variables than others, our analysis suggests that reliance on neurobiological variables as causal factors in autism is unnecessary. We present six paradigms that may play critical etiologic roles in the development of behaviors labeled as autistic. Recognizing these contingencies and their resulting behaviors during the first two years of a child's life may contribute substantially to earlier identification, more effective treatment and, quite possibly, to the development of Applied Behavior Analysis programs for the prevention of autism that could be implemented immediately. Conceptualizing autism as a contingency-shaped disorder of verbal behavior may provide a new and potentially more effective paradigm for behavioral research and treatment in autism. More...

Procrastination

Articles and information:

Article: The Three-Contingency Model of Self-Management
Self-management techniques allow people to modify their own behavior. Self-management is not a specific, unitary intervention, but rather a collection of techniques. These techniques range from a person simply making a commitment to change to completely designing and implementing an intervention. Regardless of the specific elements, all self-management techniques are implemented to help people control their own behavior with less reliance on outside behavior-change agents. Once learned, self-management techniques can then be applied to a wide variety of everyday behaviors. More...

Information: I'll Stop Procrastinating...When I Get Around To It
Written by Dr. Richard W. Malott & Holly M. Harrison More...

Higher Education

Articles and information:

Article: Should We Train Applied Behavior Analysts to Be Researchers?
Should we continue the tradition of training nearly all our masters and doctoral students to be research scientists, or should we provide different training for those who wish to be practitioners? In searching for an answer to this question, the present paper involves informal use of two general approaches of behavioral systems analysis: front-end analysis and feasibility analysis. More...

Article: Follow-Up Commentary on Training Behavior Analysts
I recommend that we decrease our ineffective efforts to train prominent researchers (Malott, 1992). So I am honored that three of our most prominent researchers have critically evaluated those recommendations (Baer, 1992; Johnston, 1992; Reid, 1992). One of those researchers leads the elite list of 26 scholars who authored at least five articles in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA) during its second decade. He published 16 articles! And he is not a college professor! Another of those researchers is a college professor and is responsible for having trained more of JABA’s authors than perhaps anyone in the world. More...

Article: Behavioral Systems Analysis and Higher Education
I suggest that we behavior-analysis college professors practice our preaching, that we apply behavior analysis, organizational behavior management, and behavioral systems analysis to our university instruction. I suggest that we college professors apply to what we do most (teaching) the approaches and philosophy we know works everywhere else—behavior analysis and all it implies. More...

Notes from a Radical Behaviorist

Articles and information:

Notes from a Radical Behavior Analyst: Clinton, Bush, Skinner, and Social Determinism
The loser, mediocre, elite continuum fascinates me. What’s the difference between Skinner and you and me? How’d he become Skinner, and why didn’t we? What’s the difference between us and the world’s greatest experts? Skinner’s peer group wasn’t the members of ABA. We ABA members worship him, as well we should. But his peer group wasn’t us; it was his world-class colleagues at Harvard. There are two different worlds, the one these world-class experts inhabit and the one we inhabit. More...

Notes from a Radical Behavior Analyst: My Everyday Jesus Christ
B. F. Skinner Of course, of course. But why? Because he was the best theoretician in the field, by far. Because he could deal with the most complex of issues without slipping into a mentalistic mire, never losing his foothold on the high ground of objective data language. And because he provided objective data language. And because he provided the framework, the system in which it all fits. Every little bit of it fits right in there. Nothing left out; and if there is, we'll take care of it in the next few years. Without him, you and I would still be giving Rorschach tests or worrying about habit strength and anticipatory goal gradients. More..

Notes from a Radical Behavior Analyst: Is it Morally Defensible to Use the Developmentally Disabled as Guinea Pigs?
Others have argued that we can justify the developmentally disabled spending some of their time as research subjects by considering it part of the tuition they pay. And we might make the same argument for college sophomores in Introductory Psych when they serve as subjects; however, we are obligated to provide the sophomores with an educationally valuable debriefing, in return for their participation. But I don't think the developmentally disabled get such an exchange. And often the institution doesn't get any pay off either. Now I'm somewhat sympathetic with the problems of the basic researcher in this area; they may simply have nothing to offer the individual or the institution, and yet science must march on. But we might say that for every hour the developmentally disabled individual gives the researcher in the name of science, the researcher should give one hour to the individual in the name of one-on-one therapy or training. More...

Notes from a Radical Behavior Analyst: ABA Millionaires
Shocking, a little embarrassing, and a little gratifying (value confirming, which is also embarrassing) but true: There are many millionaires in ABA. Maybe not too exciting because, the American middle-class is now full of millionaires. And, of course a million ain’t what it used to be, but it’s still enough. More...

Notes from a Radical Behavior Analyst: Was Skinner a Nativist?
Skinner argued that dog’s barking could not be conditioned. And Kurt Salzinger got a PhD degree from Columbia for proving him wrong. Check with Kurt on the details. Unfortunately, from my view, Skinner was much more of a nativist, than many of us environmentalists would like to think. In a major speech at ABA, he casually mentioned that intelligence was inherited; he said this way before his protégé Richard Hernstein co-authored The Bell Curve. Skinner’s talk dealt with the origins of language, or as we say in the biz, verbal behavior. More...

Notes from a Radical Behavior Analyst: Should We Celebrate Skinner's 100th Birthday at ABA?
Skinner’s 100th birthday is coming up and ABA is planning no party, in part, for fear that we would be (or be seen as) deifying the man. My view is that it’s OK to deify Skinner, because Skinner is god. We are Skinnerian’s; don’t give me that pathetic, pedantic, no I’m a “behavior analyst” not a “Skinnerian” crap. More...

Notes from a Radical Behavior Analyst: Dick Malott's Deep Thoughts
Save the world with behavior analysis. Better living through behaviorism. More...

Notes from a Radical Behavior Analyst: I Got them Bad Bell-Bottomed Genes
This ain't no scholarly critique of Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve. Ain't based on the book. It's a pop reaction to the Reader's Digest/Classic Comics version as presented in a two-cassettee recording, read by Dr. Murray. In the first part, the majority of the book, the authors are clearly just humble scientists in search of the cold, buck-naked truth. Just scholars looking with dispassionate objectivity at vast amounts of data, letting them IQ points fall where they may. Weighing the evidence pro and con. No agenda, hidden or otherwise. More...

Organizational Behavior Management

Articles and information:

Article: Achieving the Positive Life Through Negative Reinforcement
Based on the three-contingency model of performance management, I make the following argument: (1) Often, we fail to behave as we should because the natural contingencies supporting appropriate behavior are ineffective; the natural contingencies involve outcomes for each individual response that are either too small, though of cumulative significance, or outcomes that are too improbable. The delay of the outcome is essentially irrelevant. The psychodynamic model of the cognitive motivational theorists provides a poor explanation for why we fail to behave as we should. (2) The performance-management contingencies in organizational behavior management (OBM) must usually involve deadline-induced aversive control, even when they are based on powerful reinforcers. Furthermore, such performance management succeeds only to the extent that that the person behavioral history, “Jewish mother,” has inculcated an appropriate value system. Wiegand and Geller’s critique of the necessity of the use of aversive control fails to take into account the necessity of deadlines and the difference between instrumental and hedonic reinforcers; furthermore, it greatly over values the power of intrinsic reinforcement contingencies in OBM. More...

Article: Maintenance of Interventions: The Behavioral Research Supervisory System
First a brief review of the intervention. What you're talking about is our Behavioral Research Supervisory System (BRSS) that we use to manage the performance of students doing BA honors theses, MA theses, MA projects, Ph.D. dissertations, and assistantship tasks. It's a performance-management system where the researchers and assistants normally work about 13 hours per week. They are supervised by advanced grad students or by me, in the case of the Ph.D. students. More...

Article: Trait-based Personality Theory, Ontogenic Behavioral Continuity, and Behavior Analysis
Behavior analysts can and should but rarely do account for the ontogenic continuity of behavior, thus leaving the field open to the reified, biological-deterministic traits of personality theorists. The well-written, carefully reasoned article by B Roberts (2002) pulled my chain almost as violently as did the articles by Geller and S Roberts (2002). B Roberts suggests that, at last, organizational behavior management (OBM) and personality psychology are reunited. Fortunately, that is an overstatement; the reuniting is occurring but only in the worldview of a small number of OBM behavior analysts (e.g., Geller and S Roberts). More...

Article: Power in Organizations
This critique of Goltz and Hietapelto’s operant model of power suggests: The definition of power and leadership are too narrow. Powerful leaders rarely manage performance through operant contingencies.The opportunity to manage the behavior of others is rarely the reinforcer controlling the behavior of the powerful.The aversiveness of control by the powerful is rarely the basis for resistance to organizational change.Much behavior-analytic extrapolation from the Skinner box is unwarranted.Much behavior-analytic theorizing is uncomfortably close to the hypothetico-deductive theorizing about which Skinner warned us. More...

Article: What OBM Needs is More Jewish Mothers
E. Scott Geller’s main problem is that he’s a mentalist in behavior-analyst clothing. And his main virtue is that he’s a mentalist in behavior-analyst clothing. I disagree with everything Geller (2002) and Steve Roberts (2002) wrote. But I agree with their main point. Their main point is not that we would better sell behavior analysis to mentalists, if we too became mentalists; that was just an excuse for Scott and Steve to hop on their soap box and preach mentalism in the guise of Scott’s active-caring model. Their main point is that we would be better OBMers, if we became mentalists. More...

Article: The EO in OBM
Olson, Laraway, and Austin (2001) propose an increased emphasis on the establishing operation in organizational behavior management. Their proposal raises interesting questions about theory, science, and practice. (1) What should be the role of theory in behavior analysis? (2) Should we try to find problems that match our solutions or vice versa ? (3) What is the relative importance of the establishing operation and the performance-management contingency in managing organizational behavior? (4) Should theory and basic research be more informed by the issues raised in applied settings? More...

More information:

Book: Principles of Behavior, 5th ed.

Book: I'll Stop Procrastinating...When I get Around to It

Book: Humanistic Behaviorism & Social Psychology

Grad: Being a Grad Student with Malott

BACC: Behavioral Academic Career Counseling (BACC)

BATS: The Behavior Analysis Training System (BATS)


About Dick Malott

Dick Malott received his BA in psychology at Indiana University in 1958 where he was privileged to study with James Dinsmoor. He received his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1963 where, he had the additional privilege of studying with William Cumming, W. N. Schoenfeld, and Fred S. Keller. And, like many before and after him, he frittered away a few years of his life doing research on schedules of reinforcement. Then he taught with the Kantorians at Denison University from 1963 to 1966.

In 1966, he helped start the behavior analysis program at Western Michigan University, where he continues to teach. At WMU, he also helped start an intro psychology course that taught behavior analysis to 1000 students per semester, with the aid of 500 lab rats and 100 Skinner boxes (1000 lever-pressing rats per year).

Now, his students only condition 230 rats per year, but they also do 130 self-management projects and provide 13,500 hours of training to autistic children each year. Malott and his students have packaged their teaching/learning efforts in educational systems known as the Student-Centered Education Project (aka The First Fly-by-night Underground College of Kalamazoo), the Behavioral Social Action Program, and the Behavior Analysis Training System. Currently, every summer, he teaches the Behavioral Boot Camp, an intense 18-hour-per-week, 7.5 week, graduate-level, behavior analysis seminar. He has been actively involved in teaching African-American students and international students behavior analysis and behavior systems analysis at the graduate level. He and his students developed and run the Behavioral Research Supervisory System, a performance management system to help 40 BA, MA, and Ph.D. students per year, complete their projects, theses, and dissertations with high quality and in a timely manner. In addition, he and his students developed and run the Behavioral Academic and Career Counseling service, a behavioral-systems approach to helping 100 students per year get into behavior-analytic graduate programs and get behavior-analytic jobs.

Malott helped start Behaviordelia (a now-defunct publisher of behavioral comic books, etc.), the Association for Behavior Analysis (ABA), the Association for Behavior Analysis’ Teaching Behavior Analysis Special Interest Group, Association for Behavior Analysis’ Education Board, Association for Behavior Analysis’ Behavioral Follies (previously known as the Behavioral Performing Arts), Association for Behavior Analysis’ Social (Previously known as the Behavioral Boogie), the Behavioral Bulletin Board on CompuServe, and the Notes from a Radical Behaviorist bulletin board in the Cambridge Center’s Behavioral Virtual Community (http://www.behavior.org).

He wrote the newsletter and column Notes from a Radical Behaviorist and coauthored Principles of Behavior (the book previously known as Elementary Principles of Behavior.) He is now (and has been for many years) working on I’ll Stop Procrastinating when I Get around to It and Applied Behavioral Cognitive Analysis. He has presented in 13 countries and has received two Fulbright Senior Scholar Awards. In 2002, he also received ABA’s Award for Public Service in Behavior Analysis. Over the years, he has also worked extensively with multi-media presentations, from seven-projector slide shows to contemporary PowerPoint presentations, but always with jazz and rock and roll lurking in the background and art and behavior analysis sharing the foreground.

 

Dick Malott's Deep Thoughts

Contact

Dick Malott can be contacted through the following:

E-Mail:
dickmalott@dickmalott.com

Mailing Address:
2520 Wood Hall
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo, MI 49008