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| Biology, Behavior, and the Meaning of Meaning |
| Sunday, May 27, 2007 |
| 9:00 AM–10:20 AM |
| Randle B |
| Area: TPC |
| Chair: Heidi L. Eyre (Jacksonville State University) |
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| Nature/Nurture, Nurture/Nature: The Looking Glass as Infinite Egress. |
| Domain: Theory |
| PAUL THOMAS ANDRONIS (Northern Michigan University) |
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| Abstract: Behavioral scientists have long argued about whether biological variables (nature) or experiential variables (nurture) were of greatest importance in the control of behavior, and each side repeatedly has declared the matter settled in favor of its own position. The equivocating academic debate has continued at a typically leisurely pace, some scholars achieving rock star status and wealth by writing popular books that promote their own parochial views. Meanwhile, practitioners interested in doing something useful about behavior have been subjected to mixed, confusing, and costly pronouncements that have helped them little in finding solutions to the important problems of human behavior they face each day. The present paper argues that the dichotomy between nature and nurture is illusory, that the biological makeup and evolutionary heritage of organisms interact with their environmental histories in ways that produce rather than summate in behavior (as heritability estimates suggest), and that biological and environmental variables belong to the same set, inseparable in producing and controlling the behavior of organisms. Data from ethology, neurobiology, and the experimental analysis of behavior support this view the behavior may be a relatively simple outcome of complex, interactive biological and ontogenic contingencies. This approach will be applied to examples drawn from the areas of verbal behavior and language, and the manifestation of developmental and psychiatric difficulties (like autism and schizophrenia). Finally, the author will argue that by focusing on those directly accessible variables most strongly associated with particular behavioral outcomes, applied psychologists may not only better address the practical problems they face, but may also help resolve the academic debate as well. |
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| Building the Behavioral Bridge Between Biological and Cultural Sciences. |
| Domain: Theory |
| SIGRID S. GLENN (University of North Texas) |
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| Abstract: Publication of E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology initiated what has become a deluge of scholarly efforts in many disciplines to bring the evolution of “cultural things” under the tent of evolutionary biology. In this approach, genetic variation and natural selection do the heavy lifting in explaining culture, and the role of behavioral contingencies is short-circuited. Naturalistic explanations that recognize transmission of learned adaptations (e.g. Dawkins) typically view the adaptations as in the “mind” (or brain) of individuals without attention to the behavioral contingencies that account for transmission of learned behavior. Another approach to a naturalistic explanation for cultural evolution is the evolutionary epistemology of Donald Campbell, whose “universal selection theory” viewed “blind variation and selective retention” as accounting for all phenomena of adaptation. Although all of these perspectives leave room for the role of operant selection in a unified (or universal) selectionist theory, its role is usually entirely neglected, or at best peripherally noted. This paper reviews some of this work, explains the problems inherent in ignoring operant selection, and uses Skinner’s three kinds of selection to sketch a version of universal selection theory that gives equal weight to all three kinds. |
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| On the Distinction Between Meaning and Meaningful: A Contingency Analysis. |
| Domain: Theory |
| T. V. JOE LAYNG (Headsprout) |
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| Abstract: Though philosophers have debated the meaning of meaning for some time, instructional designers and those responsible for teaching the meaning of things must provide procedures that produce changes in an individual’s verbal repertoire that indicate meaning has been learned. An additional problem for the instructional designer is whether or not that change is indeed meaningful. Whereas B. F. Skinner suggested that meaning was to be found in the controlling stimulus relations, this presentation suggests meaningfulness is similarly to be found in the consequential relations. Comparisons of the two relations will highlight both distinctions and similarity in concepts and their role in the analysis of verbal relations important for instruction and the interpretation of behavior. |
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