Re: Darwin, Evolution, the Animal Kingdom, and Man

From: David Longley (David_at_longley.demon.co.uk)
Date: 12/07/04 

Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 15:49:06 +0000

In article <BDDB7D09.2C22%galexand@ozemail.com.au>, Greg Alexander
<galexand@ozemail.com.au> writes
>David, thanks for your post.
>The amount of questions it has raised in my mind is beyond what I can really
>explore online right now, I think I'll do some more reading. I'm not sure
>where to start, and my background in this area is simply not enough. (I'm a
>government certified trainer too :), with further training in the use of NLP
>in training.)
>
>I guess one question is what is EAB? I've seen it mentioned several times
>without a good overview (I assume it means "Experimental Analysis of
>Behaviour?) - and you actually say you're not sure if the basic principles
>are understood. Can you point me to any good overview of the field that I
>could read?, or something addressing the better methods of teaching you say
>were explored?
>
>Thanks again for your post.
>Greg

Yes, EAB = Experimental Analysis of Behaviour - aka "Behavior Analysis".

Skinner wrote a book "The Technology of Teaching" (1968). He lamented
that this would probably only be understood by those who knew the lab
work and would therefore just fall on deaf ears, never reaching the
people it needed to. I think this is right. One has to have *some* first
hand experience with operant work (usually lab based), to know what he's
talking about - as without that, people will just read what he says in
the language of our common-sense mentalistic folk psychology. This is
one of the reasons why I've suggested that folk in c.a.p play with the
rat in a Skinner Box simulation "SNIFFY"
(<http://www.wadsworth.com/psychology_d/special_features/sniffy.html>).
When people do lab work with pigeons and rats, they will spend days,
months, even years observing and recording behaviour. I think it takes
that to grasp what the EAB folk are talking about and I don't see any
substitute for first hand experience. SNIFFY is the closest many folk
will get bar having their own children I reckon.

One of the best general introductions which tried to dispel the myths
about "behaviorism" was Skinner's book "About Behaviorism" which was
published back in 1974, but I think his earlier "Science and Human
Behavior" (1953) is the best overview. His most important book was
undoubtedly "Verbal Behavior" (which is quite a difficult book and
requires one to know something about the lab work with animals). His
most important paper, in my view, was his 1945 "An Operational Analysis
of Psychological Terms". Other good introductions are the books by
Rachlin and by Baum. These are past students of Herrnstein. Each of
these, like Staddon also provide their own angle on the EAB. If you're
looking for something online, have a look at the SEAB website which
provides papers from the Journal of The Experimental Analysis of
Behaviour (<http://seab.envmed.rochester.edu/jeab/index.html>) and The
Applied Analysis of Behavior). Most of these paper tend to be incredibly
hard to read even for those within the field, it is the most austere
area of psychology and always has been in my view. The language *is*
inevitably difficult to learn (and in recent years it has become much
harder!). However, I think an excellent personal and very informative
perspective on the history of Behavior Analysis (the EAB/AAB - which is
basically Division 25 of the APA) can be gleaned from reading the July
2002 issue of the JEAB (available at the site above) which covered the
history of "The Pigeon Lab" from the early 1948 to the 1998
(<http://seab.envmed.rochester.edu/jeab/articles_selected/index.html#2002>.
The changes from Skinner's days to Herrnstein's were subtle but dramatic
(and there was a public row between them in 1977 in the American
Psychologist which is worth reading. Twenty five years after first
reading the exchange I'm still not sure of what to make of it - but it
is critically important for anyone interested in "learning" in my view.
What Herrnstein did elsewhere (and the fuss it generated and still does
today) is very much part of this. I've suggested here (in c.a.p) over
the years that it's a mistake to set up "evolutionary psychology" vs.
"behaviour genetics" but I fear most won't see what I am talking about
or why I'm even bringing it up. It does have very practical implications
for what can and cannot be done though - and trying to do the impossible
(even with the best intentions) can be a disaster for all concerned.

Finally, have a look at the posts from Glen Sizemore - he's active in
the EAB (and neuroscience) and can be counted on to give patient and
reliable answers to sensible questions/criticisms.

>
>"David Longley" <David@longley.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> Skinner was aghast at the state of US education. He fought to bring the
>> technology of teaching to bear on education practice (and the training
>> of teachers) just as one might expect any good empirical scientist with
>> a proven track record. He spent a good part of the latter part of his
>> professional life trying to get "educators" to adopt what comes down to
>> self-paced programmed learning, but wasn't given the support he needed
>> by folk like Connant. Half a century later we still see teachers
>> struggling to do a combination of crowd control and mixed ability
>> teaching four or five times a day, with such large classes that for most
>> it's well nigh impossible (which isn't helped by an estimated 1:20 being
>> ADHD). It often seems to come down to varying degrees of expertise in
>> the ability to herd cats. Is this the consequence of "political
>> correctness" or is it just human idiocy? People like Connant played a
>> significant role in engineering these problems in the first place. Is it
>> conspiracy or is it ***-up? Perhaps it depends on one's politics?
>>
>> Despite the UK government's education policy publicly asserting that it
>> discourages intake selection (suspected infringement can lead to court
>> action), it happens nonetheless through natural (and socially
>> engineered) diversity in "cognitive ability" and social mobility. As a
>> consequence, and in conjunction with other policies designed to keep
>> delinquents out of custody (and in the community in the belief that most
>> boys grow out of it) our inner city schools (in particular) are
>> progressively finding themselves having to cope with more and more
>> (serious) delinquency. As a consequence, "behaviour management" is
>> becoming more and more important in our schools. We now have a new kind
>> of "care in the community". The figures bearing on this are quite
>> remarkable, and yet most folk aren't aware of them. To give a financial
>> perspective on this, a rough estimate at the combined cost of crime and
>> education in the UK is in the order of 120 billion pounds per annum.
>>
>> Fourteen years ago, we began trying to redress some of this via a
>> positive system of behaviour management based on attainment which
>> explicitly drew on the EAB/AAB, and which was implemented under
>> naturally controlled conditions. Whilst the words from the above system
>> are now in wider circulation, I'm sure the practice is not. We have IT
>> everywhere, but we still don't have effective programmed
>> learning/behaviour management - at what cost?
>>
>> In fact, I'm still not sure to what extent the basic principles were
>> ever really understood. People seem to have a peculiar scotoma where it
>> comes to grasping the nature of behaviour analysis [#1] - something
>> Skinner frequently remarked upon and which we have seen all too often in
>> c.a.p. In my own applied field, we gave new credence to the notion of
>> "programmes" but the initiative was soon blighted by the introduction of
>> "cognitive skills" courses (imported from Canada of all places!). The
>> rationale for this flew in the face of all the empirical evidence that I
>> was aware of at the time of their introduction, which is why I
>> vehemently argued against their introduction. Over a decade later, they
>> fly in the face of our government's independent research as well (which
>> basically just replicates the earlier contrary evidence).
>>
>> The price of "political correctness" is more than the reinforcement of
>> idiocy. I get much the same feeling about all of this that I do about
>> much that I see in c.a.p in response to expositions of what behaviour
>> analysis comes down to. It's so absurd that one has to ask if there's
>> more to all this than meets the eye?
>>
>> If so, the question remains, at what expense? At whose expense?
>>
>> #1 I'm sure the books by folk such as Huxley and Orwell didn't help
>> matters - but people are more readily influenced by science fiction than
>> they are by science. This is a serious problem and one which is, sadly,
>> widely exploited to most peoples' detriment.
> 

-- 
David Longley
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