Unit 1 (chap 1-4) Flashcards
Behavior
An individual living organism’s activity, public or private, which may be influenced by external or internal stimulation.
Response
A single instance of behavior
Behavior is something ________ do.
individuals
Stimulus event
Things you see, hear, smell, taste, or feel.
External stimulation
Changes outside the body, or knowledge that is passed to us through our senses.
Internal stimulation
Changes, experiences, or feelings that occur within someone.
First goal of behavior analysis
Accurately predict behavior
Why is predictability important?
Predictability allows adaptive behavior.
Adaptive behavior
learned behaviors that reflect and individuals social and practical competence to meet the demands of everyday living.
Second goal of behavior analysis
Discover functional variables that may be used to positively influence behavior.
Functional variable
Is a variable that, when changed, reliably and systematically influences behavior.
What does it mean to say, “behavior is determined?”
It means that behavior has a cause, or multiple causes.
Occam’s law of parsimony
All else being equal, the best explanations of behavior, holds that, all else being equal, the best explanations of behavior are the simplest explanations.
Quantitative
behavior of interest is observed with such precision that it can be counted.
Systematic
implemented exactly as it is supposed to be.
Empirical
Evidence must be observable.
Humans are ____ to many known biases, so any individual behavior analyst cannot be entirely objective.
subject
Behavior analysis is an objective, unbiased, ________ approach to discovering how behavior works.
Scientific
_______ are usually derived from theories
Predicitions
Independent variable
A publicly observable change, controlled by the experimenter, which is anticipated to influence behavior in a specific way.
Replication
How scientific discoveries are evaluated to be true. Repeating the experiment and getting the same outcome.
Determinants of behavior
Nature and nuture
Nature
Innate behaviors the product of the evolutionary past of the species.
Nuture
All the events experienced during an individual’s life.