Chapter 1 Flashcards
ABA
A science devoted to the understanding and improvement of human behavior and to produce an analysis of the factors responsible for that improvement.
Science
sytematic approach for seeking and organizing knowledge about the natural world.
Functional relation
When changes in an antecedent or consequent stimulus class consistently alter a dimension of a response class.
determinism
the universer is a lwaful 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.
experiment
a carefully conducted comparison of some measure of the phenomenon of interest under two or more different conditions in which only one factor at a time differs from one condition to another.
parsimony
requires that all simple, logical explanations for the phenomenon under investigation be ruled out, experimentally or conceptually, before more complex or abstract explanations are considered.
respondent behavior
reflexive behavior
operant behavior
not elicited by preceding stimuli but instead are influenced by stimulus changes that have followed the behavior in the past
experimental analysis of behavior
demonstrations of orderly and reliable functional relations between behavior and various environmental events.
mentalism (radical behaviorism)
an approach to the study of behavior which assumes that a inner/mental dimension exists that differs from a behavioral dimension. radical behaviorism includes and seeks to understand all human behavior.
explanatory fiction
a fictitious variable that is another name for the observed behavior that contributes nothing to an understanding of variables responsible for developing or maintaining the behavior
methodological behaviorism
acknowledge the existence of mental events but don’t consider them in the analysis of behavior.
generality
a behavior change has generality if it last over time.
