Establishment of a Laboratory for Continuous Observation of Human Behavior

Abstract

Since the earliest experimental analyses of behavior, it has been asserted that the conceptual tools derived from operant research would be useful in the understanding, prediction, and influence of human behavior. Although much of the extrapolation of operant principles to human behavior has been verbal speculation only, the last 20 years have seen an explosion of studies of human behavior employing experimental analysis of behavior. No general characterization can be completely accurate, but there appear to have been two main branches of this endeavor. One is applied behavior analysis in which human behavior that occurs in everyday life and in nonlaboratory settings is analyzed and often changed through the systematic application of contingencies. In this area the behavior studied is usually immediately relevant to the human context that generated the interest, and the intervention is carried out over whatever length of time is needed to produce a result that is satisfactory for the client, institution, or researcher. The other branch is the experimental analysis of human behavior in which laboratory researchers engage human participants in studies of the same variables that are investigated with nonhuman animals. In this area the behavior studied is usually moving an arbitrarily selected operandum brought under the control of laboratory-derived stimuli and consequences, and the research is carried out over relatively brief periods (e.g., several 1-hour sessions) as allowed by the availability of student research pools. Recently there has been some growth in the experimental analysis of human verbal behavior, though it is often studied in conjunction with a simple nonverbal task that is a laboratory analogue of more complex human action.