Algumas dimensões ainda atuais da análise do comportamento aplicada

Vinte anos atrás, uma nota antropológica descreveu as dimensões vigentes da análise do comportamento aplicada como prescrita e praticada em 1968: ela era, ou deveria se tornar, aplicada, comportamental, analítica, tecnológica, conceitual, eficaz e capaz de resultados apropriadamente generalizados. Uma nota antropológica semelhante, hoje, ainda encontra as mesmas dimensões prescritivas e, em maior medida, descritivas. Várias estratégias novas tornaram-se conhecidas; algumas no domínio da análise conceitual, algumas relacionadas ao status sociológico da disciplina e algumas sobre sua compreensão da natureza sistêmica necessária para qualquer disciplina aplicada que operará no domínio de comportamentos humanos importantes.Palavras-chave: aplicação, disseminação, tecnologia, terminologia, história.  Nota: referência do texto original, cuja permissão de tradução foi garantida pela editora Wiley: Baer, D. M., Wolf, M. M. & Risley, T. R. (1987). Some still-current dimensions of applied behavior analysis. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 20(4), 313-327. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1987.20-313. TradutoresJoão Eduardo Cattani Vilares eMarcos Spector Azoubel

Algumas dimensões atuais da análise do comportamento aplicada

A análise do comportamento individual tem sido sistematicamente estudada e praticada em vários contextos, ao longo de muitos anos. Essa análise resultou em descrições de princípios comportamentais que têm sido aplicados a problemas de comportamento socialmente relevantes nos últimos anos. As pesquisas de análise do comportamento aplicada – direcionadas a investigar as variáveis que podem ser efetivas para melhorar o comportamento sob estudo – possuem características que as distinguem das tradicionais pesquisas da análise do comportamento não aplicadas, conduzidas em laboratório. O estudo precisa ser aplicado, evidenciando a importância do comportamento alterado, comportamental, apresentando medidas diretas e quantitativas do comportamento alterado, e analítico, identificando com clareza o que foi responsável pela mudança. Além disso, o estudo deveria ser tecnológico, descrevendo precisamente todos os procedimentos que contribuíram para a mudança, conceitualmente sistemático, relacionando os procedimentos empregados e os resultados identificados com os processos comportamentais básicos, e efetivo, produzindo mudanças suficientemente relevantes, e deveria demonstrar alguma generalidade, planejando e avaliando a extensão dos efeitos da aplicação ao longo do tempo, para outras situações e para outros comportamentos.Palavras-chave: análise do comportamento aplicada, delineamentos experimentais, metodologia, pesquisa aplicada, tecnologia comportamental.  Nota: Referência do texto original, cuja permissão de tradução foi garantida pela editora Wiley: Baer, D. M., Wolf, M. M. & Risley, T. R. (1968). Some current dimensions of applied behavior analysis. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1(1), 91-97. Resumo e abstract foram elaborados a partir dos principais aspectos do texto; a publicação original não incluía resumo. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1968.1-91.TradutoresJoão Eduardo Cattani Vilares eMarcos Spector Azoubel

Developing correspondence between the non-verbal and verbal behavior of preschool children

Correspondence was developed between children's non-verbal and verbal behavior such that their non-verbal behavior could be altered simply by reinforcing related verbal behavior. Two groups of six children each were given food snack at the end of the day: for reporting use of a specific preschool material during free play (procedure A); and then only for reports of use which corresponded to actual use of that material earlier that day (procedure B). Initially, procedure A alone had little or no effect on the children's use of materials. Procedure B resulted in all of the children in one group actually using a specific material, and after repeating procedures A and B with this group across a series of different materials, procedure A alone was sufficient to significantly increase use of a specific material. Correspondence between verbal and non-verbal behavior was produced such that, in this group of 4-yr-old disadvantaged Negro children, “saying” controlled “doing” 22 or more hours later. In the second group, procedure B initially did not increase the use of a specific material; rather, the children's reports decreased so as to correspond to the intermittent use of the material. It appeared from subsequent procedures with this group that maintenance of a high level of reporting was crucial to the saying-then-doing correspondence seen in the first group

Using preschool materials to modify the language of disadvantaged children

Although language remediation programs have generally been conducted with the use of special materials in structured group settings, traditional preschool practice emphasizes “incidental teaching” incorporated into children's free play. To determine if incidental teaching practices could be effective in improving children's speech, this study investigated the spontaneous speech of 12 disadvantaged children during free-play periods over eight months of a preschool program. Whenever the children selected a preschool play material, they were prompted and required to ask for it, first by name (noun), then by name plus a word that described the material (adjective-noun combination), then by use of a color adjuctive-noun combination, and finally by requesting the material and describing how they were going to use it (compound sentence). As each requirement was made, the children's general use of that aspect of language markedly increased, but little change was noted in the amount or nature of the children's interactions with teachers or their use of a set of materials to which they had free access. This study demonstrates that preschool free-play periods can be powerful “incidental teaching” periods by capitalizing on moments when children seek new play materials

The organization of day-care environments: “zone” versus “man-to-man” staff assignments

In a large day-care center, measures of group participation were used to compare how much of a child's time is lost from planned activities during the daily transition from lunch, through the bathroom and dressing areas, to the nap area. Participation measures were taken using the “Zone” and “Man-to-Man” staffing procedures, two typical methods for dividing responsibility among teaching staff. In the “Zone” procedure, each teacher was assigned responsibility for a particular area, and for all children who passed through that area. In the “Man-to-Man” procedure, each teacher was assigned responsibility for shepherding a group of designated children through all activity areas during each transition. The Lunch-to-Nap transition using the Zone staffing assignment was accomplished with a smaller decrease in child participation in planned activities than the transition utilizing the Man-to-Man procedure. Thus, other things being equal, it is recommended that the Zone procedure be used in group-care programs with more than one staff member, with each teacher being responsible for specific activity areas, rather than specific children

Anti-litter procedures in an urban high-density area

In urban high-density areas, litter has become an increasingly obvious and pervasive problem. In the present study, repeated measures of the amount of litter on randomly selected yards in an urban low-income housing project were used to evaluate the effectiveness of a series of anti-litter procedures directed at the children residing in the project. Paying children for volume of trash collected resulted in only a small decrease in the number of litter pieces present. Paying them for cleaning assigned yards markedly decreased the level of litter in all sampled yards. Thus, children can be employed to maintain a clean neighborhood in spite of the rapid accumulation of new litter in urban yards

Incidental teaching of language in the preschool

“Incidental teaching” denotes a process whereby language skills of labelling and describing are learned in naturally occurring adult-child interactions. In the present study, 15-min daily samples of the spontaneous speech of 11 children were recorded during free play over eight months of preschool. After incidental teaching of compound sentences, increases in unprompted use of compound sentences were seen for all the children, first directed to teachers, and then to children, in accordance with who attended to the children's requests for play materials. The incidental teaching procedure also stimulated spontaneous variety in speech, and appears to have general applicability to child learning settings

The effects of play materials on social play

To increase cooperative and social behaviors in children, contingency management programs have been successfully employed. This study examined the possibility that children's social behavior might also be significantly influenced by the nature of the available play materials. Children in an urban recreation center were systematically provided with toys designed for social or isolate play. It was found that social play occurred only 16% of the time when the children were provided with “isolate” toys, whereas social play occurred 78% of the time when children were provided with “social” toys. Thus, the selection of play materials should be an important consideration in any effort to teach children social behaviors