Online Enrichment Considerations Inspired by Martin Ivancic’s CONSIDERING COVERT FUNCTIONS FOR BEHAVIOR

EverNotes from a Radical Behaviorist:  

1. Generativity. I have been concerned about generativity for 50 years, at least. Simple concept formation like Herrnstein and Loveland’s (1964) pigeons pecking at pictures of people. This may even be an example of generativity where the stimulus class of people is hard to understand in terms of simple stimulus generalization. For example, We might get transfer to two pictures of people that are simply line drawings while we were trained only on full-color pictures. I imagine we might be able to train only green pictures of people and yet get transfer to red pictures of people but not a green chair. I am always amazed at the "generativity" of our autistic kids, like maybe transferring as the same concept of picture of mom and real mom and recognizing mama from the back and discriminating between her and another woman from the front. Maybe they have a complex behavioral history with mama outside of the DTT booth that helps with this quick concept formation and transfer to far out examples.
2. Maybe I need to add to my weekly and monthly meetings with grad students something like what's the best and worst thing you have done since we last met. 

1. A few days ago the worst thing I did was work on Facebook and Yelp all morning and not work out at the gym. 
2. The best thing I did was have a pretty good Psych 6100 meeting.
3. Yesterday, the worst thing was having a really crappy, distracted two hour writing session, that I counted as a full two hours.
4. Yesterday, the best thing I did was put a $5 contingency on starting on writing by 9:30 AM and also on getting home from work by 7:30 PM.
5. Also, a best thing is that I’m realizing I need to make a distinction between biological determinism and intrusive variables like brain injury and drugs. I was also going to include Down’s syndrome in this later category until I Wikipediaed it: Down syndrome (DS) or Down's syndrome, also known as trisomy 21, is a genetic disorder caused by the presence of all or part of a third copy of chromosome 21. So I still haven’t quite figured out how to articulate it, but I’m still positive it’s not biologically determined who will like polkas and who will like Viennese waltzes.  
6. 1. So what about the loss of memory, the inability to recall, as I age, I can't remember names or recall things as well as I used to, even though I was never good at it. Is it that I'm not using the right behaviors when I vainly try to recall that name. Or is that my name recollection neurons are deteriorated? 
   2. How do we remember or fail to remember where you parked your car?
   3. 1. Do we establish a verbal chain by repeating the car’s location once or twice, as we walk to our office?
7. And what about verbal-motor chains?
8. 1. Dialing a phone number or operating a combination lock.  
   1. I have trouble staying focused when I work on my combination lock; is that a biological function of aging? 
   2. I am constantly thinking about something irrelevant, daydreaming, as I wander through life, thereby often screwing up little activities throughout the day.
Martin, you say that to later recall, we must repeat at that time, we must rehearse
1. I think I’m so in the moment when I am introduced to someone, that I don't say their name a few times, either overtly or covertly while imaging them or thinking about seeing them, etc. 
2. 1. And one minute later I have to ask, Now what was your name, again?
3. Is it possible that we get even worse at rehearsing as we grow older, for whatever lazy-ass reason.
4. Martin, you say overt behavior must be rehearsed with reinforcement many times before it is learned and remembered, whether over or covert. 
5. 1. Maybe the more reinforced rehearsal, the longer we remember it. 
Whaley used to make the point that being able to escape an aversive condition made us more sensitive it’s aversiveness. And I’m more and more impressed with his intuition on this one. 
1. As I get increasingly into intradentals and flossing, I find myself being more aware and less and less tolerant of food caught between my teeth and needing to escape it with a toothpick or whatever, as soon as possible. 
2. We don’t notice the aversiveness of our shoes and clothes until we get home from work or school and can escape into something more comfortable, if not into total nudity.
3. I’m having a great time concentrating on my writing, until I get a phone call and have to excuse myself from my caller so I can run to the toilet for a quick pee, as I could only notice, for the first time, that I had this terrible bladder pressure.
4. I think this also accounts for the “sensory integration issues" of autistic kids have. They are much less tolerant of aversive stimuli so mild that we hardly notice, because they can tantrum there way out of them.
5. Martin, not exactly sure if this is consistent with your statement "However, when this escape contingency is reviewed, it becomes clear that it is the escape behavior that is strengthened rather than any perceived pain or suffering.” But clearly it’s all part of the same fascinating issue, either way.
Save the World with Introspective Behavior Analysis
This will be an online supplement to Principles of Behavior 7e.