Overt and covert behavior

The term "behavior" has been misrepresented and misinterpreted by many in the school psychology field, including proponents as well as opponents of behavior analysis. Proponents have used the term too loosely, while opponents have used a bit of a warped definition to attack the field.

Furthermore, school psychologists as well as behavior analysts have also taken a very narrow view of the definition of behavior.

According to Cooper, Heron, and Heward (2007), in order for a phenomenon to be considered a behavior, we need to have several conditions:

1. there must be a part of the organism which is moving.
2. there must be a change in the environment as a result of this movement.

With this, it is easy to see that throwing a desk or completion of homework are behaviors. However, some individuals in the field develop behavior plans based on the lack of a behavior, such as "not doing homework" and "not throwing a desk as targets or goals of behavior plans.

That is not going to work.

You need to target behaviors constantly. You may want to reduce certain behaviors or increase other ones, but you want to target behaviors or to set behaviors as goals - not non-behaviors.

Let's look at reading, something that is often not considered to be a behavior. While reading, there is movement of the lips, tongue, and vocal chords. After the behavior is done, there is a transformation of the sound waves in the environment, which informs us that we have had a behavior occur.

Ahh, someone would say - that only counts if the person is reading out loud. What if the person is reading silently.

Yes, it is sticky, but not unmanageable. If one is reading silently, thinking, feeling mad, or examining a beautiful painting, there are neurotransmitters which are being released and activating neurons. After the neurosynaptic reaction the brain is different than what it was prior to starting the behavior. Therefore, these activities qualify as a behavior.

Overt behaviors are those that anyone can observe, while covert behaviors are those that only the organism can examine.

More on this after a bit....

B.F. Skinner quotes

I came across a few quotes here and there from BF Skinner:

• The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.

• I did not direct my life. I didn’t design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That’s what life is.

• Physics does not change the nature of the world it studies, and no science of behavior can change the essential nature of man, even though both sciences yield technologies with a vast power to manipulate the subject matters.

How is fear learned?

An article in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience indicates that that the neural processes associated with the development of fear are the same whether humans personally experienced an aversive event or only witnessed it.

The study shows that the amygdala, which is known to be critical to the acquisition and expression of fears from personal experience, is also involved during the acquisition and expression of fears obtained indirectly through social observation.

Previous research has shown how people develop fears after first-hand experience of an aversive event—getting stung by a bee or being burned by a hot pan. In acquiring these fears, a process known as fear conditioning, the brain’s amygdala plays a critical role.

However, it’s unclear if fear conditioning can occur indirectly—that is, through social observation with no personal experience. It is also uncertain what neural processes take place in the acquisition of fears stemming from events or circumstances not experienced first-hand.
In this study, subjects witnessed a short video of another individual participating in a fear-conditioning experiment. In the video, subjects saw another person responding with distress when receiving mild electric shocks paired with a colored square.The subjects watching the video were then told they would take part in an experiment similar to the one they just viewed.

Unlike the experiment in the video, these subjects never received shocks.

The results showed that the participants had a robust fear response when they were presented with the colored square that predicted electric shocks in the video, indicating that such a response resulted from merely observing—rather than directly experiencing—an aversive event.

In addition, using brain imaging techniques, the researchers found that the amydgala response was equivalent with both when watching others receive a shock and when presented with the colored square that was previously paired with shock in the video. This finding demonstrates that similar neural systems are engaged when fears are learned through first-hand experience or by merely observing others.

The knowledge of somebody else’s emotional state may evoke empathic responses. However, as our results reveal, when others’ emotions are accompanied with vivid expressions and perceived as potentially relevant to our own future well being, we may engage additional learning mechanisms.

In a way, learning by observing others’ emotional responses is like exploiting their expertise without being directly exposed to the potential risks associated with the direct learning. This seems a very adaptive thing to do for most social animals, which could explain why it is commonly seen across species. However, it remains to be explored in what way uniquely human social abilities contribute to learning fears through social observation.

Eating disorder education programs are really harmful

A new article in the International Journal of Eating Disorders suggests that teaching teenagers about eating disorders can make them more knowledgeable about the problem, but it may also make them more likely to engage in eating disorders behaviors.

Yale University researchers found that when they presented female high school students with videos on eating disorders, it met the intended goal of boosting their knowledge about anorexia and bulimia.

However, the team saw that the students didn't necessarily find the results of eating disorders unappealing. Teens who watched a video featuring a woman recovering from an eating disorder became more likely to view girls with eating disorders as "very pretty," and some thought it would be "nice to look like" the woman in the video.

The findings suggest that more research should go into the unintended effects of eating disorder education before such programs are widely used, the researchers conclude in their article in the International Journal of Eating Disorders.

Marlene B. Schwartz (the principal investigator) suggested that having an attractive, articulate woman talk about her eating disorder could inadvertently "glamorize" the condition.

• 376 female high school students viewed one of two videos on eating disorders.
• Both videos were the same, except for the "presenter." In one video, the presenter was a young woman identified as a doctor, who told the story of a typical eating disorder patient; in the other, the woman was a "recovered eating disorder patient" who described her personal experience.
• The students completed questionnaires before and after the video.
• Overall, the study found, both videos increased the girls' knowledge about anorexia and bulimia.
• Regardless of which video they saw, the girls were more likely to say afterward that "it's not that hard" to recover from an eating disorder. They were also more likely to believe girls with eating disorders have "strong" personalities.
• Girls who viewed the video featuring the eating disorder patient were particularly likely to see women with anorexia or bulimia in a positive light.
  

Some of the discussions of the article suggested that instead of targeting "anti-eating disorders" programs, schools should address eating disorders by promoting healthy eating, exercise and positive body image, and discouraging "weight bias" and teasing based on physical appearance.

In general, I think that this is a correct view to espouse. In essence, by developing eating disorders prevention videos, we are focusing on the elimination of behaviors (or future behaviors) without teaching new behaviors.

Criticism of Piaget

I've often been surprised at how much people in education(and laypersons as well) take for granted that Jean Piaget's work may be false. Although we question many aspects of our lives, such as religion, politics, even the decision to vaccinate children against viruses and cancers, we often do not question "big names" in psychology.

Well, we should.

I'm not going to go into the intricacies of Piaget's theory. If you are interested, you should reference the Wikipedia article on his life and work. However, in general, Piaget's theory indicates that children progress intellectually through four stages of development: Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operations and Formal Operations. At each one of these levels, Piaget posited, there were different challenges that the child needed to deal with. He also indicated that unless the child mastered the tasks in the one stage, he or she could not master the tasks in other stages.

There are problems that are inherent in all theories which posit "stages" of development. Development does not occur in discrete stages - it occurs whenever the environment places increased demands and/or provides less support to the individual. In our society, it simply appears that we all tend to place these demands on children at around the same time - this makes it appear that we are witnessing "stages" of development.

Zimmerman conducted a series of various studies beginning around the 1960's and up until today demonstrating that if the environment placed certain demands, then children would surpass what was expected of them.

Here are some other studies:

Baillargeon et al. (1985). Infants could identify, to a reasonable degree, events which violated the laws of physics, even though, Piaget noted that infants at the "sensorimotor" stage could not do so.

Das Gupta & Bryant (1988). Children were able to follow simple transformations, even though, Piaget noted that children at the "pre-operational" stage could not do so.

Hughes (1978). Children were able to take the perspective of multiple people even though, Piaget noted that children at the "pre-operational" stage could not do so.

Light, Buckingham & Robbins (1979). When children were taught to pay attention to the concrete properties of an event (e.g., pouring liquids into different sized beakers), then they were able to do so, even though, Piaget noted that children at the "pre-operational" stage could not do so.

McCarrigle (1978). When given discrete instruction about the super-ordinate and sub-ordinate categories, children were able to classify information effectively.

Piaget was instrumental in getting people to think about children as individuals who are developing. However, children develop in radically different ways. Assessments of intelligence (WISC-IV) appreciate this as these children tend to go through items as much as possible. There is no cap on how much a child can or cannot do on a particular set of items.

Pizza Hut reading program - no way man.

Since 1985, that's been the gist of Pizza Hut's Book It, an incentive program used by 50,000 schools nationwide to reward young readers with free pizzas. The program is now under attack by child-development experts who say it promotes bad eating habits and turns teachers into corporate promoters.

Book It, which reaches about 22 million children a year, "epitomizes everything that's wrong with corporate-sponsored programs in school," said Susan Linn, a Harvard psychologist and co-founder of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.

This week, Linn's organization called on parents to end their schools' participation in the long-standing program.

Though some activists have previously questioned Book It, Linn said Friday that only after the recent upsurge of concern over child obesity and junk food did her group feel it could make headway with a formal protest campaign. She said many schools are trying to reduce students' access to soda, and contended that Book It should face similar scrutiny.

But the program -- which has given away more than 200 million pizzas -- has deep roots and many admirers at the highest levels of politics and education. It won a citation in 1988 from President Reagan, and its advisory board includes representatives of prominent education groups, including teachers unions and the American Library Association.

Dallas-based Pizza Hut says Book It is the nation's largest reading motivation program -- conducted annually in about 925,000 elementary school classrooms from October 1 through March 31. A two-month program is offered for preschoolers.

Participating teachers set a monthly reading goal for each student; those who meet the goal get a certificate they can redeem at Pizza Hut for a free Personal Pan Pizza. Families often accompany the winners, turning the event into a celebration that can boost business for the restaurant.

At Strafford Elementary School in Strafford, Missouri, the roughly 500 students collectively read 30,000 books a year with Book It's help, said principal Lucille Cogdill.

I remember reading something about this in the book Fast Food Nation - there the author described the fact that many children were induced towards pairing their love for fast food and reading.

Theoretically, this should work. In essence, Book It! is a token economy, in which a person receives tokens (tickets, money, etc.) which may be exchanged for items later on. Many people have raised concerns that using this techniwque is analogous to bribery.

That's so wrong, it is not funny. Bribery is the attempt to get someone to do something that is wrong or illegal. Here we are pairing something that the child finds enjoyable with reading. We do it when children first learn to read with praise. Pizza Hut is just doing it with disgusting fast food which kids love.

I think that that is the problem - the choice of rewards is limited and not appropriate. In essence, the fast food chain is using the behavioral technology uniethically - there should be a choice of healthier awards that children should be able to choose from.

For more information see: http://www.nowpublic.com/pizza_hut_reading_program_gets_a_thumbs_down_from_critics_0