What is Behaviour Analysis?
Behaviour Analysis is interested in people ? how they learn and what motivates them. Behaviour Analysts believe that the best way to understand people is to study behaviour.
Behaviour Analysis is the science of behaviour and it has the identified the general reasons behind why people do what they do.
But what do we mean by ?science? and ?behaviour??
What is Science?
Over the history of humanity, people have sought to understand human behaviour. Many have tried to achieve this understanding through art, literature, religion and philosophy. All of these approaches have been successful to varying extents on their own terms, but one of the most successful endeavours has been science.
Science refers to the systematic approach to seeking and organising knowledge about the natural world.
Sciences share certain attitudes and assumptions.
These include:
Determinism ? an assumption that the universe is lawful. Everything is ? in principle ? predictable. There is a cause and an effect.
Empiricism ? involves the objective observation and the avoidance of subjective influences on a study.
Experimentation ? involves the controlled comparison of some measure of the subject matter
Replication ? repeating experiments to determine the reliability and usefulness of findings
Parsimony ? always use the simplest, accurate explanation to explain research findings
Philosophic Doubt ? continually questioning the truthfulness of all scientific theory and knowledge
As practitioners of a science, behaviour analysts share these assumptions and attitudes with other scientists.
So what is Behaviour?
Behaviour is everything an individual does. It includes thoughts and actions. Eating a burger is behaviour but so is thinking about how good it tastes.
The differences between behaviours like ?thinking? and behaviours like ?eating? lies in the fact that thinking is covert by virtue because it occurs inside a person, while eating is overt and can be observed by someone nearby.
Behaviour analysis is a comprehensive approach to the study of the behaviour of organisms including behaviour that occurs within a person.
How does Behaviour Analysis differ from other sciences that examine learning and motivation?
Different sciences address different types of questions with regard to learning and motivation.
For example, a cognitive scientist may address learning by describing mental models of processes related to long term memory storage and retrieval.
A neuroscientist may describe learning in terms of the structure or functioning of the brain.
While behaviour analysts appreciate the importance of such factors as context for learning, our focus is on the study of the interaction between behaviour and environment.
A person?s behaviour is determined by their past and present environment. While we cannot alter a person?s brain structure, we can alter a person?s environment. This makes behaviour analysis extremely useful in affecting behaviour change and teaching new skills.
In this respect, behaviour analysis is an optimistic science. We see good reason to believe that we can address many important societal issues through the use of our science