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Overview
This edition features some significant organizational changes: the respondent conditioning chapter is now Chapter 1, a general introduction to operant conditioning is now covered in Chapters 2 and 3, and the introduction to research methods is now covered in Chapter 4. These changes were made to help instructors prepare students for starting a research project at the beginning of the course. Two new chapters include Chapter 5 on the philosophy supporting behavior analysis, and Chapter 24 on verbal behavior that introduces B.F. Skinner’s approach and terminology. This edition also features a new full-color design and over 400 color figures, tables, and graphs.
Principles of Behavior is an essential resource for both introductory and intermediate courses in behavior analysis. It is carefully tailored to the length of a standard academic semester and how behavior analysis courses are taught, with each section corresponding to a week’s worth of coursework. The text can also function as the first step in a student’s journey into becoming a professional behavior analyst at the BA, MA, or PhD/EdD level. Each chapter of the text is integrated with the Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB) task list, serving as an excellent primer to many of the BACB tasks.
The text is supported by a set of PowerPoint slides with figures, tables, and graphs for every chapter and a robust test bank with multiple choice, fill in the blank, matching, and short answer questions for every chapter for a total of over 1,500 questions.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781138038493 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
| Publication date: | 03/31/2021 |
| Edition description: | 8th ed. |
| Pages: | 518 |
| Product dimensions: | 8.25(w) x 11.00(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Kelly T. Kohler earned her PhD at Western Michigan University (WMU) under the mentorship of Dr. Malott. Following graduation, she joined the faculty at WMU. During her time there, she helped oversee the Behavior Analysis Training System (BATS) lab, which specialized in training students to become practitioners with a solid foundation in the science of human behavior. She also helped start the Kalamazoo Autism Center. Her areas of interest include autism and other developmental disabilities, verbal behavior and generative language, teaching behavior analysis, and training practitioners.
Table of Contents
PrefacePart I: Respondent Conditioning
Chapter 1 Respondent Conditioning
Part II: Operant Conditioning
Chapter 2 Operant Conditioning for Dummies Part I
Chapter 3 Operant Conditioning for Dummies Part II
Part III: Methodology and Philosophy
Chapter 4 Research Methods
Chapter 5 The Philosophy Supporting Behavior Analysis
Part IV: Reinforcement
Chapter 6 Positive Reinforcement
Chapter 7 Negative Reinforcement
Part V: Punishment
Chapter 8 Positive Punishment
Chapter 9 Negative Punishment
Part VI: Extinction and Related Processes
Chapter 10 Extinction and Recovery
Chapter 11 Differential Reinforcement and Differential Punishment
Part VII: Motivation
Chapter 12 Unconditioned and Conditioned Reinforcers and Punishers
Chapter 13 Motivating Operations
Part VIII: Stimulus Control
Chapter 14 Basic Stimulus Control
Chapter 15 Complex Stimulus Control
Part IX: Complex Processes I
Chapter 16 Imitation
Chapter 17 Avoidance
Part X: Complex Processes II
Chapter 18 Shaping
Chapter 19 Behavioral Chains
Part XI: Schedules of Reinforcement
Chapter 20 Ratio Schedules
Chapter 21 Time-Based Schedules
Part XII: Complex Processes III
Chapter 22 Concurrent Contingences
Chapter 23 Maintenance and Transfer
Part XIII: Verbal Behavior
Chapter 24 Verbal Behavior
Part XIV: Rule-Governed Behavior
Chapter 25 Rule-Governed Behavior: Concepts and Applications
Chapter 26 Rule-Governed Behavior: Theory
Chapter 27 Thanks
Preface
AUDIENCE
When we wrote the first edition of this textbook (at that time titled Elementary Principles of Behavior EPB), we intended it for first-year, university-level psychology courses. But an American Psychology Association committee pleasantly surprised us by also recommending it for high school psychology courses. Then we found behavior analysts using it at all levels, including graduate courses; in a variety of departments, from dentistry to social work to special education; and from community colleges to universities to in-service training programs. So we've tried to write subsequent editions with all of these audiences in mind. To assess the generality of our success, we evaluate Principles of Behavior (PB) in both graduate and undergraduate courses. Though grad students differ from undergrads, of course, the grad students evaluate the book at least as favorably as the undergrads.
We've built more flexibility into this edition to accommodate further this variety of audiences, especially with our different levels of the enrichment section. But also, we've tried to write the essential Fundamentals sections to appeal to both the jaded graddate student and the eager freshman. And, we've tried to write those Fundamentals sections so all students can easily understand them. However, though we've tried to make the Fundamentals simple, we've also tried not to make them simplistic. And though we've tried to make the Fundamentals clear, we've also tried not to make them conceptually unrigorous. (Some value a book only if it's difficult; we hope such readers will feel compelled to adopt different criteria.)
THE FUNDAMENTALS AND ENRICHMENTSECTIONS
The following material is redundant with a section in Chapter 1, but it's worth mentioning here also. We've divided each chapter into two main sections. We call the second section the Enrichment section. All the subsections that come before it we call the Fundamentals section, the bare bones of the text. The student needs to master each Fundamentals section to understand the Fundamentals sections of following chapters. However, the student needn't master the Enrichment sections to understand the later Fundamentals sections. Also, we've usually divided the Enrichment section into three levels-Basic, Intermediate, and a few Advanced Enrichment sections. We've tried to keep the Basic sections at the same level of difficulty as the Fundamentals sections. The Intermediate and Advanced levels get progressively more difficult and esoteric; yet they assume no knowledge of behavior analysis beyond this book.
Here's the audience to whom we've aimed each level: the Basic level—beginning students who will do no further work in behavior analysis, and the Intermediate level—juniors, seniors, and others who will be doing further work in behavior analysis. We assume anyone reading the Intermediate level also will read the lower-level. The Advanced level is for true scholars. For access to other advanced enrichment sections, we invite you to visit our web site at www.DickMalott.com. Of course, the instructor may evaluate the levels of difficulty or appropriateness differently than we have.
IN THE SKINNER BOX
To illustrate many basic behavioral contingencies and procedures, we go to hypothetical examples in the Skinner box. We find the simplicity of the life of the rat or pigeon in the test chamber to be an excellent tool for understanding the complexity of the life of the human being in the normal environment. We also do this to emphasize the phylogenic continuity of the principles of behavior. But we put most of this in the Enrichment section, so teachers can omit it if they wish to play down that continuity. (Incidentally, we've found phylogenic continuity of behavior doesn't put off most students. Students are amazingly open to new ideas. However, their professors in the humanities and social sciences aren't always so open!)
FIRST NAMES
When we first introduce specific behavior analysts in this book, we normally do so formally, with their last name and professional title. But then we usually move into an informal first-name style. We do this for three reasons: We think this style makes for more pleasant reading about real people with real first names. We think this style may suggest that professional behavior analysts are just regular human beings and that being a professional behavior analyst is a reasonable goal to which the reader might aspire. Finally, a first-name style correctly suggests that behavior analysts form a small, close-knit, warm, and friendly family whose members know each other on a first-name basis. On the other hand, we don't intend to suggest presumptuous familiarity. Our data say that students prefer it this way.
WHERE'S THE INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER?
We omitted the traditional intro chapter because we find that general intro summaries of a discipline make great logical sense to the professional but little pedagogical sense to the novice. By being broad, summaries must be too general, too abstract, and too vague to alter effectively the repertoire of the beginning reader or to act as an effective establishing operation or discriminative stimulus that will increase the likelihood the novice will go to the next chapter. Our experience suggests it's best to start right off with case studies that will effectively reinforce reading the book. No student has said they missed having an intro chapter.
SIMPLE RIGOR
We've tried hard to make this book easy—readable, clear, interesting, and entertaining. But we've also tried hard to make it rigorous. We have tried not to compromise rigor in the name of popularization or simplification. Furthermore, we've tried to provide the basis for a solid conceptual mastery of the principles of behavior. As part of this effort, we've included compare-and-contrast sections where we help the student compare and contrast confusing Preface to the Instructor concepts and to make important distinctions—for example, escape versus punishment, reinforcer versus reinforcement, time out versus response cost, penalty versus extinction, and differential reinforcement versus reinforcement.
RESEARCH METHODS AND ETHICS
We introduce the issues of research methods in small units in the Intermediate Enrichment sections throughout this book. We do so for two reasons. First, we can introduce the issues with the research to which they are crucial. But more important, we can avoid combining all the methodology issues in one chapter too early in the book—an approach most students find deadly. When you start with the research methods first, students don't know what the heck they're researching and couldn't care less about the methodology.
In short, we think a pedagogical sequence differs from a logical sequence. Often they go in opposite directions. So we recommend an analog to backward chaining. Start with what interests most students—saving the world through behavior analysis. Spice it with small doses of methodology. Then have them review the whole area once we've got them irrevocably committed to our cause! Incidentally, we think much the same about the history of a discipline. Students appreciate it more at the end of a course than at the beginning. At the beginning, they could not care less about where the discipline came from, because they may not care all that much about the discipline itself. But if the course has succeeded in helping students appreciate our field, then they may become more interested in its history. In this book, we integrate a small amount of history as we go along. We included ethical issues in the intermediate enrichment sections throughout this book, as we've done with the research methodology issues. And for much the same reasons.
Spreading research methodology in small chunks throughout the book may cause a problem if you want your students to do research projects from the beginning of the semester and you feel they need to know some basic design concepts. So to reduce this problem, at the back of this book we've also provided a chapter on research methods. This will then give your students a more coherent view. Furthermore, Chapter 29, Research Methods, is divided into three main sections, the last two being the ones most relevant to actual research methods and the last two also being accessible after the students have read the first couple chapters of PB. So assigning the last two sections of Chapter 29 more or less anytime you want should work fine.
RESPONDENT CONDITIONING
We don't get to respondent conditioning until Chapter 21, for two reasons: first, respondent conditioning is not fundamental to our treatment of operant behavior, so putting it early would break the cumulative flow of the concepts and principles. Second, we think students need a good grounding in operant procedures before they can discriminate between operant procedures and respondent procedures. It ain't easy. (Most grad students and some faculty members can't discriminate between a conditioned eliciting stimulus and a discriminative stimulus, a discrimination failure exacerbated by the common practice of calling them both antecedent stimuli.) Introducing respondent conditioning before students have a firm grounding in operant conditioning puts the students at great risk of erroneously classifying every behavior they see as respondent when it's probably operant. Students have an almost genetic tendency to respondently, reflexively, immediately say respondent conditioning or reflexive whenever confronted with a novel instance of operant behavior. This latent Pavlovianism might best be prepared for by many chapters of operant analyses, before the Pavlovianism can be unleashed and extinguished. But instructors who think otherwise can assign the first nine sections of the respondent conditioning chapter right after Chapter 2 in this book with as much ease as if the chapters were physically placed early in the book. The tenth section of the respondent conditioning chapter should wait until after the extinction chapter. And the last section should wait until after the discrimination chapter. One size fits all.
FICTIONAL USE OF PUBLISHED RESEARCH
We feature fictional heroes and heroines in this book. They are Max, Sid, Dawn, Juke, the students from Sid's seminar, and some of the clients. We use this fictional approach to increase the readability of the text. Graduate students, as well as undergraduate students, prefer this approach. However, our heroes and heroines refer to the original research. We use their referencing to illustrate that a good practitioner checks the published research before intervening. We also use this referencing and associated comments to help the reader appreciate the real people who did the real work. (All the data and graphs we present are based on the actual data from the relevant research.)
MORE FLEXIBILITY
We've included a few sections on the structure of the book, for example "How to Use the Study Questions" and "In Defense of Mickey Mouse Questions." Most reviewers said they appreciated them. That's just one more thing they wouldn't have to worry about telling their students. But some instructors might not want to use them. And probably some instructors will not want to use all the material in all the Enrichment sections. When we use the book, we vary the sections we assign depending on the level of the course.
RULE-GOVERNED BEHAVIOR
We asked a nonrandom sample of our colleagues what they thought were the most important issues to hit our field in 20 years (since the first edition of this book). Many pointed to the issues of rule-governed behavior and the control of behavior by delayed outcomes. We agree. But some think these issues are passing fads! And few seem to agree on the theoretical analysis of these issues. So we make a big deal out of it, but at the end of the book. This postponing helps: The student can approach complex rule-governed behavior, after mastering the basic concepts and principles. But this postponing also hinders: While reading the first part of the book, students risk doing simplistic analyses of complex contingencies, for example in organizational behavior management. We have tried to reduce this problem of simplistic analysis by restricting the first part of our book mainly to research based on immediate reinforcement and punishment. In theory, the students can read those later chapters on rule-governed behavior early in the course. But we've tried that, and the theory doesn't work too well; the rule-governed behavior chapters seem too difficult without reading the preceding chapters. So here's how we cope: When a student raises an example in which a delayed outcome seems to control behavior, we say, "Put it on the back burner, until we get to the advanced chapters; then we'll deal with it." If we really get our act together, as teachers, we might actually set up a back-burner section, where we store the students' examples, until the burner is hot; but that o hasn't happened yet.
CHANGES FROM EPB 4 TO PB 5
The changes in this edition are part of our empirical, continuous quality-improvement process as developed and implemented in Elizabeth Trojan Suarez's dissertation. The evaluation process revealed sections we needed to revise and did revise to improve clarity.
Those sections are:
- Objectivity vs. Subjectivity (Chapter 2)
- The Escape Model of the Sick Social Cycle (Chapter 3)
- The Punishment Model of the Sick Social Cycle (Chapter 4)
- Penalty, Response Cost, and Time-Out (Chapter 5)
- The Law of Effect (Chapter 5)
- An Example of Functional Analysis (Chapter 6)
- Shaping vs. Behavioral Chaining (Chapter 8)
- How Learned Reinforcers are Acquired (Chapter 11)
- Noncontingent Reinforcers as a Control Procedure (Chapter 11)
- Verbal Behavior (Chapter 12)
- Prompts vs. Discriminative Stimuli (Chapter 12)
- Added vs. Built-in Contingencies for Imitation (Chapter 14)
- How Do You Know If It's Really Imitation? (Chapter 14)
- Teleology (Chapter 15)
- Discrete Trial vs. Free-Operant Procedures (Chapter 17)
- Differential Punishment of High Rate (Chapter 20) Removed it and put it in the Advanced Enrichment booklet.
- Respondent vs. Operant Conditioning (Chapter 21)
- Respondent vs. Operant Extinction (Chapter 21)
- Discriminative Stimulus vs. Conditioned Stimulus (Chapter 21)
- Respondent vs. Operant Conditioning (Chapter 21)
- All of Chapter 22 (converted to analogs of avoidance contingencies)
- All of Chapter 23 (converted to analogs of avoidance contingencies)
- Added Reinforceable Response Unit (Chapter 23)
- Added Why Analogs to Avoidance are not Direct-acting Contingencies (Chapter 23)
- Five Philosophies of Psychology (Chapter 26)
- Moral and Legal Control (Chapter 26)
- Sexuality (Chapter 26)
- Overall Summary of Maintenance and Transfer (Chapter 28)
- Many sections (Chapter 30)
Though much more could be done, we're happy with the way PB 5 has evolved. Hope you will be too.