Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Pavlov’s work is also important to the field of ABA.  He worked in the late 1800s to early 1900s in the field of classical conditioning (FK-13-14).  Classical conditioning is the process of pairing an unconditioned response with a conditioned response.  In the case of Pavlov, he paired the unconditioned response of a bell sound with the conditioned response of salivation when food was presented to an animal.  After a number of trials of the pairing, only the sound of the bell was needed to make the animal salivate since it had been paired with the conditioned response.

B. F. Skinner

The experimental branch of behavior analysis began in 1938 with the publication of B. F. Skinner’s book, The Behavior of Organisms.

Skinner used operant conditioning, which uses the consequences of behavior to shape future behavior.  Operant behaviors are not elicited by preceding stimuli but instead are influenced by stimulus changes that have followed the behavior in the past. In his work with pigeons in 1963, he taught them to either turn around or peck a plate in a cage in order to receive food.  In this case, he used their behavior based on the visual cue caused a treat to be produced which reinforced the given behavior when the cue was presented again in the future.

Skinner’s most important contribution to the understanding of behavior is the notion of the operant three term contingency.  This was the first time that the consequences of behavior was used in the study of overall behavior.

Skinner also incorporated private events into the system of behavior, creating radical behaviorism in 1945.  This branch of behaviorism includes private and internal events as being under covert stimulus control.  Skinner suggested that thoughts were behavior and logically supposed that they were under the same control contingencies that observable behavior was.

Books by Skinner:

About Behaviorism
Verbal Behavior

What is ABA anyway?

ABA stands for Applied Behavior Analysis.  It is the science dedicated to improving human behavior by using the scientific method to analyze behavioral interventions and determining their effectiveness in improving behaviors of social significance.   It uses the basic principle of reinforcement in order to increase desirable behaviors.  The function of detrimental behaviors is analyzed and more beneficial behaviors are taught to replace the detrimental behaviors by reinforcing the new, and incompatible behaviors.