Chapter 3 Applied Extensions of Behavior Principles

Applied Extensions of Behavioral Principles 47 Chapter 3 Applied Extensions of Behavior Principles: Applied Behavioral Concepts and Behavioral Theories Steven C. Hayes, Akihiko Masuda, Chad Shenk, James E. Yadavaia, Jennifer Boulanger, Roger Vilardaga, Jennifer Plumb, Lindsay Fletcher, Kara Bunting, Michael Levin, Thomas J. Waltz, & Mikaela J. Hildebrandt University of Nevada, Reno Behavioral principles are analytic concepts that allow us to parse complex situations into functional units. They have served us well in applied psychology, but in many situations higher level concepts are needed to provide effective guidance. For example, the principle of reinforcement tells us a major way that responses strengthen, but it does not tell us in the applied area which responses to focus on, what the reinforcers are, how best to change them, how multiple schedules will interact, and so on. The situation faced by a behavioral clinician is like a person wanting to build a house and having only a set of tools and rules about how to use them, but no architectural plans. Applied behavior analysts have developed methods to deal with some of these problems (e.g., functional analytic methods to identify functional reinforcers), but these have not always scaled into all areas of clinical work because when language and cognition intrude, the problems of target specification and contingency analysis increases exponentially. In contrasts, empirical clinical psychology and related areas have attempted to avoid the need for linkage to basic principles merely by identifying techniques that work, but such efforts are unlikely to be successful as the basis of a clinical science for three major reasons (Hayes, 1998). Advances in clinical science are severely limited when they are based solely on specific formally-defined techniques because without theory we have (a) no basis for using our knowledge when confronted with a new problem or situation, (b) no systematic means to develop new techniques, and (c) no way to create a coherent and teachable body of knowledge. In other areas of applied science, middle level concepts integrated into overarching theories help scale the most basic principles into complex situations. For example, a structural engineer can use knowledge about arches or triangulation 48 Chapter 3 of braces to build strong structures, knowing that these concepts are systematically linked to basic principles in physics, but without having to redo the work linking them each time a building is designed. Middle-level concepts organized into a theory are relatively uncommon in behavior analysis. Previous attempts to define such concepts within behavioral psychology were held back by the unfortunate legacy of S-R learning theory. In the hands of S-R learning theorists, theory in behavioral psychology became a useless way station, systematically organized in a way that could not have applied impact. Despite the fact that he was proposing a naturalistic concept, Tolman (1936) planted the seed for the difficulties with his concept of intervening variables. He proposed that “mental events may be conceived as objectively defined intervening variables... to be defined wholly operationally” (p. 101). As MacCorquodale and Meehl (1948) point out, Tolman’s intervening variables were naturalistic, not mentalistic. They were merely short-hand for observed functional relations. But S- R learning theorists increasingly used the idea of intervening variables in a loose way, eventually arriving at true hypothetical constructs: Concepts that were not naturalistic descriptions of functional relations but were hypothetical entities. They explained the need for such concepts by claiming that if functional relations were “always the same ... then we would have no need of theory” (Spence, 1944, p. 51), and even adding the idea that theoretical constructs are “guesses as to what variables other than the ones under the control of the experimenter are determining the response” (Spence, 1944, p. 51, italics added). In other words, in the hands of the S-R learning theorists, theory explicated what you could not see and could not manipulate. This definition of theory is useless to applied workers who theories that suggest how to manipulate events to change what they and their clients see. It is no wonder that Skinner rejected theory defined this way (1950), because it is antithetical to achieving prediction-and-influence as goals of behavioral science. Behavior analytic psychology has a very different approach. It begins with careful behavioral observations: refined and precise descriptions of behavioral phenomena in well-characterized contexts. The functional relationship between behavioral phenomena and contextual events are organized into behavioral principles: ways of speaking about these relations that are precise and broad in scope, allowing behavioral phenomena to be both predicted and influenced. Specific complex phenomena are unpacked through functional analysis: the application of behavioral principles to a specific behavioral history and form. These are then organized into systematic and generally applicable sets of functional analyses of important classes of behavioral observations. When we have that level we have a behavioral theory. Theories of this kind are “analytic-abstractive” in that they are inductive generali- zations that sit atop abstractions and analyses based on the observational level. Behavioral theories of this kind have expanded the field of behavior analysis to the human problems to which behavior analysts have traditionally paid little attention. A prime example is the effort to expand behavioral approach to the experimental analysis of human language and cognition. Applied Extensions of Behavioral Principles 49 There are several reasons why the careful understanding of symbolic behavior and its application to behavioral problems are crucial in the field of clinical behavioral analysis. First, in many setting, such as adult outpatient work, behavior change is usually achieved through a verbal exchange between the client and therapist. Typically, the therapist does not have a direct or full access to the environment where the client’s presenting problems occurs. Given this lack of environmental control, the therapist attempts to change the client’s behavior somewhat indirectly through verbal interactions with the client (Anderson, Hawkins, & Scotti, 1997). Even in the context where the therapist has direct access to client’s environment, verbal exchanges between client and therapist are inevitable. Second, human verbal behavior is pervasive (Hayes, 2004; Hayes, Barnes- Holmes, & Roche, 2001; Skinner, 1957). Language-able individuals interact with the environment verbally and these verbal and cognitive processes become a significant source of behavior regulation. For instance, even a simple response such as burning one’s hand on a stove most likely will generate a verbal rule to not touch the stove again when it is hot. Then, touching hot stoves with bare hands is avoided in the future based on both this painful experience and the generation of rule. Third, a substantial body of evidence suggests that verbal processes change the function of other behavioral processes (Hayes et al., 2001; for a powerful experimental example of how relational learning alters classical and operant conditioning see Dougher, Hamilton, Fink, & Harrington, in press). For example, suppose a person who has a verbal rule “medication eliminates painful disease,” experiences headache, takes medicine for it, and has the headache go away. If this person later has the thought “anxiety is painful disease” a prior history of relational learning may lead the person to take medication to control the anxiety. Anxiety become a kind of discriminative stimulus but its functions are indirectly learned. Traditional behavior analysis and therapy focused on changing problematic overt behavior and emotional responses, or “first-order” change. Verbal and cognitive processes were construed entirely within the framework of direct applica- tions of respondent and operant conditioning (Mowrer, 1947; Skinner, 1957). Given the lack of a more refined account of human language and cognition, cognitive therapy (CT) emerged in the 1970s and focused on the regulatory function of cognition interpreted in a more common sense or clinical way. Following the first- order change approach, CT attempted to replace problematic cognitions with more accurate and often more positive ones. The recent emergence of acceptance- and mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy have produced another alternative. Examples of third wave behavioral and cognitive therapies include Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT; Linehan, 1993a), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT; Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 1999), Functional Analytic Psychotherapy (FAP; Kohlenberg & Tsai, 1991), Integrative Behavioral Couples Therapy (IBCT; Christensen, Jacobson, & Babcock, 1995; Jacobson, Christensen, Prince, Cordova, & Eldridge, 2000), Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT; Segal, Williams, & Teasdale, 2002), and several others (e.g., Borkovec & Roemer, 1994; McCullough, 2000; Marlatt, 2002; Martell, 50 Chapter 3 Addis, & Jacobson, 2001; Roemer & Orsillo, 2002). As a group they have ventured into areas traditionally reserved for the less empirical wings of psychotherapy, emphasizing such issues as acceptance, mindfulness, cognitive defusion, dialectics, values, and spirituality. An overarching theme that unite these therapies

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