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

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

Visually discriminated behavior in a “blind” adolescent retardate

A 16-yr-old retarded male, diagnosed organically blind and treated by those around him as a blind person, was given practice in discriminating visual stimuli. After training, he responded with significantly better than chance accuracy in a choice situation in which stimuli were as small as 18 pt Futura Medium type. In addition, he was trained to look at the experimenter's eyes when instructed to do so. Control procedures revealed that it was the reinforcement contingency that functioned to establish and maintain eye contact. Eye contact with the experimenter generalized in a limited way to situations in which this behavior was not reinforced, though not to a neutral individual. When the boy was required to use visual cues to help himself in a cafeteria line, he soon emitted the necessary behaviors, where formerly he had been assisted by others. Resumption of assistance markedly decreased self-help, suggesting that continued use of any newly learned skills would depend on the response of the individuals in his environment. The boy also learned eating behavior that appeared to require the use of visual cues

Good behavior game: effects of individual contingencies for group consequences on disruptive behavior in a classroom

Out-of-seat and talking-out behaviors were studied in a regular fourth-grade class that included several “problem children”. After baseline rates of the inappropriate behaviors were obtained, the class was divided into two teams “to play a game”. Each out-of-seat and talking-out response by an individual child resulted in a mark being placed on the chalkboard, which meant a possible loss of privileges by all members of the student's team. In this manner a contingency was arranged for the inappropriate behavior of each child while the consequence (possible loss of privileges) of the child's behavior was shared by all members of this team as a group. The privileges were events which are available in almost every classroom, such as extra recess, first to line up for lunch, time for special projects, stars and name tags, as well as winning the game. The individual contingencies for the group consequences were successfully applied first during math period and then during reading period. The experimental analysis involved elements of both reversal and multiple baseline designs

Achievement Place: the reliability of self-reporting and peer-reporting and their effects on behavior

The reliability of the boys reporting their own behavior of their peers was measured in two experiments at Achievement Place, a community based, family style, behavior modification program for delinquents based on a token (point) economy. The results of these experiments indicated that; (a) the boys were not “naturally” reliable observers, (b) the reliability of peer-reporting could be improved by providing training on the behavioral definitions and by making points contingent on agreement between each boy's peer-report and an independent adult observers' report, (c) the reliability of self-reporting could be improved by making points contingent on agreement between the self-report and the trained peer's report, and (d) giving self-reports and peer-reports did not produce a systematic effect on the boys' room-cleaning behavior as measured by an independent observer

Achievement Place: experiments in self-government with pre-delinquents

One of the goals of many treatment programs for pre-delinquent youths is the development of the skills involved in the democratic decision-making process. At Achievement Place, one aspect of the treatment program is a semi-self-government system whereby the seven pre-delinquent youths can democratically establish many of their own rules of behavior, monitor their peers' behavior to detect violations of their rules, and conduct a “trial” to determine a rule violator's guilt or innocence, and to determine the consequences for a youth who violates a rule. Two experiments were carried out to determine the role of some of the procedures in the boys' participation in the self-government system. Experiment I showed that more boys participated in the discussion of consequences for a rule violation when they had complete responsibility for setting the consequence during the trials than when the teaching-parents set the consequence for each rule violation before the trial. An analysis of the rule violations in this experiment indicated that the boys in Achievement Place reported more of the rule violations that resulted in trials than reported by the teaching-parents or school personnel. The boys reported rule violations that occurred in the community and school as well as at Achievement Place, including most of the serious rule violations that came to the attention of the teaching-parents. In Experiment II, the results indicated that more trials were called when the teaching-parents were responsible for calling trials on rule violations reported by the peers than when the boys were responsible for calling trials. When the youths earned points for calling trials the average number of trials per day increased, but more trivial rule violations were reported. These results suggest that aspects of the democratic decision-making process in a small group of pre-delinquents can be studied and variables that affect participation can be identified and evaluated

Home-based reinforcement and the modification of pre-delinquents' classroom behavior

In Exp. I, five pre-delinquents from Achievement Place attended a special summer school math class where study behavior and rule violations were measured daily for each boy. The boys were required to take a “report card” for the teacher to mark. The teacher simply marked yes or no whether a boy had “studied the whole period” and “obeyed the class rules.” All yeses earned privileges in the home that day but a no lost all the privileges. Using a reversal design, it was shown that privileges dispensed remotely could significantly improve classroom performance. In Exp. II and III, home-based reinforcement was also shown to be effective in improving the study behavior of two youths in public school classrooms. In addition, data from Exp. III suggest that the daily feedback and reinforcement may be faded without much loss in study behavior. Home-based reinforcement was demonstrated to be a very effective and practical classroom behavior modification technique