Posted by
glen e. p. ropella-2 on
May 05, 2010; 10:22pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Behaviorism-tp5003979p5011430.html
ERIC P. CHARLES wrote circa 10-05-05 02:43 PM:
> Ooooh, that is a much more specific question than it initially seemed!
Yes, exactly! Imagine my surprise when ethics entered the discussion.
[grin]
> I suppose there is a practical answer and a philosophical answer. The
> philosophical answer would set out some criterion that would be correct in some
> global sense. I fear that would get us back to ethical stuff, and keep things
> muddled.
I think there's an answer in between... the methodological answer, which
you begin to treat with your 9 (18) methods below.
> Punishment (aka 'positive punishment')
> Penalty (aka 'negative punishment')
> Punishment by prevention (of access to other contingencies)
> Differential punishment of high rates
> Extinction
> Differential reinforcement of low rates
> Differential reinforcement of incompatible behavior
> Differential reinforcement of alternative behavior
> The establishing operation
>
> We could write an almost parallel list for methods of increasing the rates of
> desirable behaviors. Such techniques are routinely used with people even with
> sever Alzheimer to positive effects. Of course, whether you think increasing
> the rate of coherent sentences from 30% to 60% is a miracle or just an okay job
> depends on your perspective. Probably the rate of your grandmother's offensive
> behaviors could have been cut in half with a pretty simple plan. Unfortunately,
> the difficulties in getting every single person who goes into her room to
> follow the 'pretty simple plan' can be quite difficult. For example, if we try
> extinction, we might need to let her spit on us without reacting, and good luck
> getting the night shift worker to follow that plan at 3 in the morning.
These are the issues I was hoping to get out of the "behaviorist"
response to the JRC defense. In that defense, they tout that some of
their skin shock and restraint methods have worked to good effect; but
they don't really talk about the numbers other than citing Carr, where
_only_ 38% of the 60 no longer required skin shocks ... and anecdotal
stories like those of the former JRC "students" are nice; but we need a
larger sample and a method for determining successful treatments over
that larger sample. In other words, I (currently) don't care whether
you increase the rate of coherent sentences in my dad _alone_,
regardless of whether it's 30-60% or 1-100%. What I care about is
whether you increase the rate of coherent sentences in a statistically
significant portion of the population of patients by X-Y%.
What percentage of patients, treated with the same method (to be
scientific, we must be isometric and isotemporal), in a large
population, respond to the 9 (or 18) methods you list above? If you
reach 50/100, do you consider that a successful behaviorist method? Or
do you need more or less?
My point is (somewhat obviously, I think) that it seems behaviorism is
dancing around some fuzzy line between the particular and the general
that many other -isms won't dance around. Hysterical (those involving
hysteresis - historical dependence) systems require a certain
particularness, case-study oriented, approach. And hysterical methods
are often characterized as unscientific because they are so case-study
driven. My questions are targeting the degree to which behaviorism is
hysterical.
And, finally, it's perfectly reasonable to say that the JRC is a poor
example of competent behaviorism. I'm just using them because they were
in the headlines. It gave me a practical reason to become interested in
this otherwise filosofickle topic.
--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095,
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