Observation and Theory in Behavior Analysis | 0.5 BCBA CEU

Description

To earn credit, you will be required to read the article and pass a 5-question quiz about it. You can retake the quiz as many times as needed, but you will not receive exactly the same questions each time.

Abstract

“Mental representations of visual objects play an important role in guiding everyday behavior” (Cooper &Schacter, 1992, p. 141). This quotation captures much of the tension between researchers in the experimental analysis of behavior and the contemporary surrounding cultural and scientific context. Many regular readers of this journal will feel that the quotation reveals misleading and counter-productive ideas. One is that mental representations that are not observable, and by some accounts may not even have physical instantiation, are nevertheless scientifically legitimate. Another is that such representations can and do cause behavior. Many readers will want to note that indelicate use of such ideas can cause logical, conceptual, epistemological, and ontological errors (Rorty, 1979; Ryle, 1949; Skinner, 1984; Wittgenstein, 1953). There may be no way to do science, however, that guarantees freedom from error. My general purpose here is to suggest that the way in which behavior analysts try to avoid these particular errors may create some of the problems Staddon identifies in his present essay.

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