Description
Enhances the understanding of a given phenomenon by enabling scientists to describe it accurately
Prediction
� Repeated observations reveal that 2 events consistently covary with each other
� Correlation-systematic covariation between 2 events
Control
� Third and highest level of scientific understanding
� Functional relations-exists when a well-controlled experiment reveals that a specific change in one event (dependent variable) can reliably be produced by specific manipulations of another event (ind
Selectionism
� Fundamental principle underlying operant conditioning
� The basic tenet is that all forms of operant behavior are shaped, selected, and maintained by their consequences during an individual's lifetime
� Skinner's concept of selection by consequences is
Determinism
� Scientists presume that the universe is a lawful and orderly place in which all phenomena occur as the result of other events.
Empiricism
� The practice of objective observation of the phenomena of interest
� Objective not subjective
� The scientist's empirical attitude demands objective observation based on thorough description, systematic and repeated measurement, and precise quantificati
Experimentation
� The basic strategy of most sciences
� To investigate the possible existence of a functional relation, an experiment must be performed in which the factors suspected of having causal status are systematically controlled and manipulated while the effects
Replication
� The repeating of experiments (as well as repeating IV conditions within experiments)
Parsimony
� All simple, logical explanations for the phenomenon under investigation should be ruled out, experimentally or conceptually, before more complex or abstract explanations are considered
� "great frugality
Philosophic Doubt
� Requires the scientist to continually question the truthfulness of what is regarded as fact.
� Scientific knowledge must always be viewed as tentative
� Healthy level of skepticism of others research and their own
Behaviorism
� One of the four interrelated domains of behavior analytic science and professional practices guided by that science
� Theory and philosophy
Experimental Analysis of Behavior
� One of the four interrelated domains of behavior analytic science and professional practices guided by that science
� Research in lab
ABA
� One of the four interrelated domains of behavior analytic science and professional practices guided by that science
� Conduct experiments aimed at discovering and clarifying functional relations between socially significant behavior and it controlling v
Practice guided by ABA
� One of the four interrelated domains of behavior analytic science and professional practices guided by that science
� Behavior analysis practitioners design, implement, and evaluate behavior change programs that consist of behavior change tactics derive
Applied
� Signals ABA's commitment to affecting improvements in behaviors that enhance and improve people's lives
� Must select behaviors to change that are socially significant for participants-social, language, academic, daily living, self-care, vocational, and
Behavioral
� The behavior chosen for study must be the behavior in need of improvement
� The behavior must be measurable
� When changes in behavior are observed during an investigation, it is necessary to ask whose behavior has changed (e.g., observer drift)
Technological
� A study in ABA is technological when all of its operative procedures are identified and described with sufficient detail and clarity "such that a reader has a fair chance of replicating the application with the same results
Conceptually Systematic
� The procedures for changing behavior and any interpretations of how or why those procedures were effective should be described in terms of the relevant principles from which they were derived.
Effective
� must improve the behavior under investigation to a practical degree; enough to make a socially important difference
� Look for behavior changes that reach clinical or social significance!
� Ask the people who deal with the behavior how much it needs to
Generality
� lasts over time, appears in environments other than the one in which the intervention that initially produced it was implemented, and/or spreads to other behaviors not directly treated by the intervention.