Review Unit 1 Terms Flashcards
Francis Bacon
he wanted science to be practical. The purpose of science should be to help people. 1600s.
Baruch Spinoza
Rejected dualism. 1600s. Said humans are entirely physical. Mind is the activity of the body. Because there’s no spiritual mind, behavior must be determined by biological and environmental events.
Charles Darwin
1800s Humans are biological organisms descendant of animals. We can learn basic human behavior traits from studying animals. Two effects: 1) behavior is a legitimate area of scientific inquiry, 2) can study animals behavior to learn about humans.
E. L. Thorndike
Demonstrates scientifically that consequences influence animal behavior
John B. Watson
coins the term “behaviorist.” Really critical of other psychologists for not being objective. Published many articles on psychology and behavior, really got the word out.
B. F. Skinner
“Radical Behaviorism.” Suggests that mind is physical and should be studied as behavior by behavioral scientists. What happens in the brain is really important even though its hard to study.
Behavioral Definition
a statement that specifies exactly what behavior to observe.
Reification
to treat an abstraction as though it were a concrete thing
e.g. using the term “sleazy” as an abstraction
Direct Observation
The second tactic of using the behavioral strategy is to use direct observation to gather information about the problem behavior.
outcome, event, interval, and time-sample
Self Report
the observer relies on their memory of the behavior
usually inaccurate
1-lack detail
2-cannot be checked
3-are often wrong
Event Recording
Best, most accurate
Uniform
A behavior does not leave a unique result (e.g. waving or saying thank you, no outcome, it happens and its done)
You record a response when you see an instance of the behavior.
Need to see the onset and offset of behavior.
“Does the behavior occur as uniform instances?” yes “Does the behavior have a result?” no
Outcome Recording
Uniform
Use this method with behaviors that leave unique results. (e.g. washing a window leaves the window clean)
Simply count the outcomes, not the behavior
“Does the behavior occur as uniform instances?” if “yes” then ask “Does the behavior leave a result?” if “yes” then use outcome recording
e.g. You want to observe how often ken does favors for other people. One result of ken doing favors might be that he will tell you how often he does them. But his report is baed on memory, and it does not use a behavioral definition. Further, he might lie to make herself look good. So his reports do not have a known relation to actually doing favors. You could not use them with any confidence to observe Ken’s favors.
Interval Recording
Nonuniform
Divide the observation period into equal, continuous, short intervals of time
Record whether the behavior occurred at least once during the interval (like behavior sheet at work)
Time Sample
Nonuniform
Record a response if the behavior occurs within one of a series of discontinuous intervals. (the beginning of each time interval does not start at the end of the prior time interval, interruptions between intervals)
e.g. Teacher checks in on one student for 20 seconds then moves on to another student for 20 seconds and so on until he repeats with the first student again
Observer Drift
when your definition slowly changes because you didn’t write it down
