A Commentary on Development, SDs, and EOs

Behavior Analysis Program
Department of Psychology
Western Michigan University

Note: This article originally appeared in the Behavioral Development Bulletin

Abstract: We should beware of operational redefinitions of mentalistic, reified terms, and connotationally loaded terms, like behavioral development. And we should beware of confusions between SDs and EOs.

Development

Here’s the problem with operational redefinitions of mentalistic and reified terms: The original meaning of those terms still controls most of the behavior of most of the users, in spite of the operational redefinition. For example, psychologists can operationally redefine intelligence as what’s measured on an intelligence test as often and as loudly as they want; but within 10 seconds of that definition, the audience and even the psychologists themselves are responding as if intelligence were an innate, inner cause of intelligent behavior and, not incidentally, of their own personal success. 

I have a similar concern with the definition of behavioral development as progressive changes in environment-behavior relationships. While this definition is nominally neutral as to etiology of those changes, the context tends to imply biological determinism, as in the following biological definition of development—a purely biological unfolding of events involved in an organism changing gradually from a simple to a more complex level. I don’t think we can define out that connotation. 

I would prefer to reload the dice with some such term as behavioral acquisition or the acquisition of a behavioral repertoire—progressive changes in environment-behavior relations, though perhaps without progressive. However, I shan’t hold my breath until ABA adopts this terminological reform.

The SD vs. the Warning Stimulus

In the original manuscript, Schlinger discussed the parent’s command, “Sit down.” Now, even though an analysis of “Sit down” is tangential to Schlinger’s paper, and even though his example may not even be in the published version, I became intrigued with it and would like to share my intrigue with you.

At first, I went along with the standard assumption that “Sit down” was an SD for the response of sitting down. But that didn’t seem to fit. In the presence of an SD, a response will more likely to be reinforced or punished. Does that fit here? Surely not punishment; so what about reinforcement? The parent says, “Sit down,” the child sits down, and the parent says, “Good sitting behavior, child.” Only in behavior-analytic textbooks and discrete-trial training would that happen. In the real world, at least the one I’m a member of, such compliance is not praised and certainly doesn’t get an M&M. So, if this is not a reinforcement contingency, what is it? Avoidance.

To understand this avoidance analysis, we need to look at a conditional stimulus—the stimuli arising from the parent’s having just said, “Sit down,” combined with or conditional on child’s standing. This conditional stimulus, instruction combined with noncompliance, is a learned aversive condition because it has been paired with some sort of aversive condition such as frowns, scoldings, shouts, or hits.