Radical Behaviourism and investigative practice: Why is the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour Skinnerian?

Abstract

The core of this paper lies more within the perspective of analyzing the processes involved in the development of scientific activity, than in the study of formal characteristics of scientific outcomes. The aforementioned approach is carried out from the Skinnerian theory of behaviour (operant conditioning). Thus, three moments of scientific activity are examined: a) the selection of scientific datum as discriminative verbal behaviour, b) the establishment of relations between variables understood as the detection of contingency relations between events and, c)the derivation of new concepts asa case of rule-governed behaviour. Moreover, the methodological characteristics implicit in the practice of The Experimental Analysis of Behaviour (TEAB) are contrasted with the previously proposed ideas. Finally, the paper concludes that the aforementioned characteristics of the TEAB are highly consistent with the analysis of scientific activity as operant behaviour, indicating the high level of coherence reached by the radical behaviourists in relation to, on the one hand, the formal aspects of their investigative practice (TEAB) and, on the other hand, the contents of their theoretical productions (operant conditioning).