2.1: The Scientific Method

The Steps of The Scientific Method

In Module 1, we learned that psychology was the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. We will spend quite a lot of time on the behavior and mental processes part, but before we proceed, it is prudent to elaborate more on what makes psychology scientific. It is safe to say that most people not within our discipline or a sister science would be surprised to learn that psychology utilizes the scientific method at all.

So what is the scientific method? Simply, the scientific method is a systematic method for gathering knowledge about the world around us. The key word here is that it is systematic, meaning there is a set way to use it. What is that way? Well, depending on what source you look at it can include a varying number of steps. For our purposes, the following will be used:

Making Cause and Effect Statements in the Experimental Analysis of Behavior

As you have seen, scientists seek to make causal statements about what they are studying. In the study of learning and behavior, we call this a functional relationship. This occurs when we can say a target behavior has changed due to the use of a procedure/treatment/strategy and this relationship has been replicated at least one other time. A contingency is when one thing occurs due to another. Think of it as an if-then statement. If I do X then Y will happen. We can also say that when we experience Y that X preceded it. Concerning a functional relationship, if I introduce a treatment, then the animal responds as such or if that animal pushes the lever, then she receives a food pellet.

To help arrive at a functional relationship, we have to understand what we are studying. In science, we say we operationally define our variables. In the realm of learning, we call this a behavioral definition, or a precise, objective, unambiguous description of the behavior. The key is that we must state our behavioral definition with enough precision that anyone can read it and be able to accurately measure the behavior when it occurs.

Frequently Used Terms in the Experimental Analysis of Behavior

In the experimental analysis of behavior, we frequently talk about an animal or person experiencing a trial. Simply, a trial is one instance or attempt at learning. Each time a rat is placed in a maze this is considered one trial. We can then determine if learning is occurring using different dependent measures described in Section 1.2.3. If a child is asked to complete a math problem and then a second is introduced, and then a third, each practice problem represents a trial.

As you saw in Module 1, behaviorism is the science of stimuli and responses. What do these terms indicate? Stimuli are the environmental events that have the potential to trigger behavior, called a response. If your significant other does something nice for you and you say, ‘Thank you,’ the kind act is the stimulus which leads to your response of thanking him/her. Stimuli have to be sensed to bring about a response. This occurs through the five senses — vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. Stimuli can take on two forms. Appetitive stimuli are those that an organism desires and seeks out while aversive stimuli are readily avoided. An example of the former would be food or water and the latter is exemplified by extremes of temperature, shock, or a spanking by a parent.

As you will come to see in Module 6, we can make a stimulus more desirable or undesirable, called an establishing operation, or make it less desirable or undesirable, called an abolishing operation. Such techniques are called motivating operations. Food may be seen as more attractive, desirable, or pleasant if we are hungry but less desirable (or more undesirable) if we are full. A punishment such as taking away video games is more undesirable if the child likes to play games such as Call of Duty or Madden but is less undesirable (or maybe even has no impact) if they do not enjoy video games. Linked to the discussion above, food is an appetitive stimulus and could be an establishing operation if we are hungry. A valued video game also represents an establishing operation if we threaten its removal, and we will want to avoid such punishment, which makes the threat an aversive stimulus.

As noted earlier, the response is simply the behavior that is made and can take on many different forms. A dog may learn to salivate (response) to the sound of a bell (stimulus). A person may begin going to the gym if he or she seeks to gain tokens to purchase back up reinforcers (more on this in Module 7). A person may work harder in the future if they received a compliment from their boss today (either through email and visual or spoken or through hearing).

Another important concept is contiguity and occurs when two events are associated with one another because they occur together closely, whether in time called temporal contiguity or in space called spatial contiguity. In the case of time, we may come to associate thanking someone for saying ‘good job’ if we hear others doing this and the two verbal behaviors occur very close in time. Usually, the ‘Thank you’ (or other response) follows the praise within seconds. In the case of space, we may learn to use a spatula to flip our hamburgers on the grill if the spatula is placed next to the stove and not in another room. Do not confuse contiguity with contingency. Though the terms look the same they have very different meanings.

Finally, in learning research, we often distinguish two phases — baseline and treatment. Baseline Phase occurs before any strategy or strategies are put into effect. This phase will essentially be used to compare against the treatment phase. We are also trying to find out exactly how much of the target behavior the person or animal is engaging in. Treatment Phase occurs when the strategy or strategies are used, or you might say when the manipulation is implemented. Note that in behavior modification we also talk about what is called the maintenance phase. More on this in Module 7.