What controls verbal responses emitted when a give behavior is observed / O que controlaria respostas verbais diante de um comportamento observado

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2005

RESUMO

The tact is a verbal operant in which the response is emitted under control of an antecedent non-verbal stimulus and is maintained by generalized conditioned reinforcement. Technically, a verbal report and an explanation can be considered tacts. Among the tacts one emits, those in which the speaker behaves verbally under the control of another persons behavior (or his/her own behavior) are important. According to this point of view, mentalistic/internalistic descriptions or explanations of behavior would consist of verbal responses emitted under the control of relations in which variables assumed to occur inside the organism are interpreted as controlling this organisms responses. The emission of this type of verbal response (internalistic explanations) would be mainly evoked when the antecedent stimulation that controls the verbal behavior has certain features. The present studys goals were to verify: (1) if variations in the antecedent/consequent stimulation of an observed behavior would alter its explanation, (2) if changes in the explanation could be considered a product of changes in the controlling variables of the observed behavior, and (3) if explanations of human behavior would be mostly mentalistic. Six adults were instructed to explain the behavior of two individuals working at a computer, clicking a mouse. Each person was shown clicking the mouse in one of two different films, and the behavior of each person was under the control of a different schedule of reinforcement (MULT VR4/DRL10s and MIX VR4/DRL10s). The verbalizations/ explanations were classified and the moment of its occurrence was superimposed to a cumulative record of the behavior being explained.. The verbalizations were classified according to seven classes.. Three of them were labeled internalistic, three externalistic, and one was referred to as explanation of the observers own behavior. The results show that the verbalizations in which the observers talked about their own behavior were the most frequent ones. The second most frequent category were internalistic verbalizations, which referred to a state or current condition of the person being observed. There was no significant difference (in number or type) between verbalizations emitted during the different films. This result was interpreted as showing that variables present only in the Multiple Schedule Film or exclusively in the Mixed Schedule Film were not responsible for the emission of verbalizations, either the non-internalistic or internalistic ones. The superimposition of the participants verbal responses on the the cumulative records of the clicking responses showed that for 4 of the 6 participants, the low occurrence of reinforcers and the low rate of clicking response seemed to control the emission of verbalizations, independently on the label they received. Finally, the terms that controlled the experimenters behavior of classifying verbalizations as internalistic were classified: the results showed that the terms that referred to cognitive processes or mood/internal states were the most frequent ones. Results are discussed considering possible controlling aspects of the film for the emission of explanatory verbal responses internalistic or not

ASSUNTO(S)

explicacao do comportamento tacts mentalism análise do comportamento comportamento humano externalism psicologia experimental termos internalistas explanation of behavior internalistic terms tato

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

Documentos Relacionados