Murray Sidman: Vários Escritos

REFLECTIONS ON STIMULUS CONTROL
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REFLECTIONS ON STIMULUS CONTROL
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EQUIVALENCE RELATIONS AND BEHAVIOR: AN INTRODUCTORY TUTORIAL
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EQUIVALENCE RELATIONS AND BEHAVIOR: AN INTRODUCTORY TUTORIAL
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EQUIVALENCE RELATIONS AND BEHAVIOR: AN INTRODUCTORY TUTORIAL
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EQUIVALENCE RELATIONS AND BEHAVIOR: AN INTRODUCTORY TUTORIAL
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EQUIVALENCE RELATIONS AND BEHAVIOR: AN INTRODUCTORY TUTORIAL
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EQUIVALENCE RELATIONS AND BEHAVIOR: AN INTRODUCTORY TUTORIAL
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EQUIVALENCE RELATIONS AND BEHAVIOR: AN INTRODUCTORY TUTORIAL
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AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. MURRAY SIDMAN
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A RESEARCH PIONEER’S WISDOM: AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. MURRAY SIDMAN
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A RESEARCH PIONEER’S WISDOM: AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. MURRAY SIDMAN
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A RESEARCH PIONEER’S WISDOM: AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. MURRAY SIDMAN
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A RESEARCH PIONEER’S WISDOM: AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. MURRAY SIDMAN MURRAY SIDMAN


A RESEARCH PIONEER’S WISDOM: AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. MURRAY SIDMAN
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A RESEARCH PIONEER’S WISDOM: AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. MURRAY SIDMAN
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A RESEARCH PIONEER’S WISDOM: AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. MURRAY SIDMAN
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A RESEARCH PIONEER’S WISDOM: AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. MURRAY SIDMAN
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A RESEARCH PIONEER’S WISDOM: AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. MURRAY SIDMAN
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A RESEARCH PIONEER’S WISDOM: AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. MURRAY SIDMAN
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A Research Pioneer’s Wisdom: An Interview with Dr. Murray Sidman
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they saw others whose expertise they could respect, they were open to collaborative ven- tures. That is the kind of group one would have to establish. We can no longer expect a scientist from outside behavior analysis to include behav- ior analysts in such a group; behavior analysts have long since broken most of their connec- tions with other sciences. It will, therefore, take a behavior analyst to recruit capable and intellectually curious scientists from other fields. Perhaps someone from behavioral pharma- cology could succeed in creating a group of scientists from other areas who were capable of recognizing techniques for establishing and measuring kinds of behavior that would interest them. Then they might be able to bring in other kinds of behavior analysts, too, who were also interested in scientific collaboration.
The second problem is how to encourage applied behavior analysts to make more use of their basic science. Such use is to a great extent missing from the original training of many applied workers. It is also largely unknown to practitioners who have learned only enough to pass qualifying exams. For example, single- subject methodology is fundamental in basic behavior analytic research; that aspect of the methodology makes the science immediately applicable to behavior therapy. Also, Skinner’s recognition that experimental behavior analysis consists of two-way interactions between subject and experimenter makes the science compatible with applied practice. Many applied workers, however, have never been made aware of these methodological differences between what they are doing and what traditional clinical psy- chologists do. Ignorance of the rationale for single-subject methodology leads to ignorance of the special importance of steady-state base- lines and multiple baselines of various sorts and of the necessity for refining such baselines to evaluate the success or failure of their treat- ments. Also, like a successful experimental program, effective behavior therapy also re- quires two-way interactions between therapist and client. The behavior of each changes as a function of what the other does. Not only must the client’s behavior change in response to therapeutic measures but the therapist must
also know how to change his/her therapeutic procedures on the basis of what the client does. Successful behavior analytic practice does not depend on a set of fixed rules but consists of op- tions that the practitioner can apply in response to what the client does.
We have a situation now in which practitio- ners who use methods that have come directly from basic research are often unaware of the source of those methods. For example, the most basic applied technique, positive reinforcement, originated in and continues to be refined by basic research. Acquaintance with this research would make applied workers more capable of responding effectively to many seeming failures in their standard reinforcement procedures. Then too, applied workers regularly use tech- niques designed to generate errorless learning while remaining unaware that the elimination of errors is at the heart of what they are doing. Such understanding would permit them to modify their teaching procedures to eliminate seeming failures of a client to learn some new and more adaptive behavior.
What I am saying here is that the practice of behavior analysis would become more generally effective if the training programs for applied behavior analysts were made more rigorous than many are at present. Also, the qualifying tests for practitioners should also be made more rigorous than they are at present.
Even more generally, I would suggest, as I have before, that neglect of basic behavior analytic science will eventually reduce and even eliminate the public approval of behavior analytic practice. The concept of empirically grounded practice is becoming known and ap- preciated by the general public. Any practice that lacks scientific backing will sooner or later lead to public rejection of that practice. Further- more, even though basic science has provided the underpinning for applied behavior analysis, if the practitioners themselves are unaware of that reality, then the public will assume that no such relation exists. When that happens, practitioners will lose their public acceptance.
Holth: Thank you for all your time and patience in completing this interview. It has really been marvelous to listen to your thoughtful


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ERRORLESS LEARNING AND PROGRAMMED INSTRUCTION: THE MYTH OF LEARNING CURVE 895


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to average the discontinuous curves so as to turn them into a gradual curve that is consistent with standard theory. With great individual variability, however, a curve produced by averaging may not only be atypical but may represent no individual.
One problem for us is that errorless learning is not what teachers and the general public usu- ally see. That is why it is so important to publicize the many demonstrations of errorless learning. Not only can it happen, we can make it happen. We can make learning curves, as measured by errors, disappear.
The simple fact that it is possible deliberately to make learning occur without errors on the part of the learner should make it obvious that we cannot conceptualize learning basically as a gradual process. The theoretical gradual curve does not represent the real learning process at all; the gradual curve is the artifact, not the all- or-none curve.
Learning curves, however, do happen; they are real. What do we say about them? If they do not measure some lawful process within the learner, what do they measure? Observations that errors are not necessary for learning lead directly to the conclusion that errors result not from the learning process but from the teaching process; learning curves measure not learners, but teachers.
Instead of investigating how pupils learn, we have to investigate how teachers teach. That the proper study of learning is the study of teaching is the exciting, counter-intuitive, radical concep- tion that the fact of errorless learning has gener- ated. We have, however, failed to present this conception to a world that needs a revolutionary approach not only to the education of children but also to the solution of adult economic, cul- tural, and political problems that call for all of us to learn new ways to behave.
There is so much evidence for this far- reaching notion that it is difficult to understand why it remains so little known. It started with laboratory demonstrations with nonhumans and continues both with laboratory and applied demonstrations with nonhumans and humans. The kinds of behavior involved in these dem- onstrations range from relatively simple acts to complex intellectual performances.
Murray Sidman
“Simple” Nonhuman Learning
Let us start with an example of seemingly simple learning by a nonhuman. Figure 3 shows a laboratory rat in a chamber that contains two levers; the animal is pressing one of them.
Figure 3. Rat pressing lever in experimental chamber.
At the animal’s lower left is a small tray into which food drops from the automatic dispenser mounted outside the chamber. The animal can get a piece of food each time it presses the lever but it has to learn to do this. If we just place our pupil in this situation with no preparation, it will show a gradual learning curve: At first, it will press the lever only rarely, but it will then press more and more frequently until it produces food as rapidly as it can.
In Skinner’s original lever-pressing experi- ments, however, the learning curves were not gradual (Skinner, 1932). Figure 4 shows indi- vidual cumulative response curves from four animals.
The recorder pen moved from left to right as time passed, and moved a small step upward each time the animal pressed the lever. Once each of these animals started, it pressed the lever frequently and steadily; they learned suddenly, in an all-or-none fashion.


ERRORLESS LEARNING AND PROGRAMMED INSTRUCTION: THE MYTH OF LEARNING CURVE 899


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