Montrose M. Wolf’s research while affiliated with University of Kansas and other places

Vinte anos atrás, uma nota antropológica descreveu as dimensões vigentes da análise do comportamento aplicada como prescrita e praticada em 1968: ela era, ou deveria se tornar, aplicada, comportamental, analítica, tecnológica, conceitual, eficaz e capaz de resultados apropriadamente generalizados. Uma nota antropológica semelhante, hoje, ainda encontra as mesmas dimensões prescritivas e, em maior medida, descritivas. Várias estratégias novas tornaram-se conhecidas; algumas no domínio da análise conceitual, algumas relacionadas ao status sociológico da disciplina e algumas sobre sua compreensão da natureza sistêmica necessária para qualquer disciplina aplicada que operará no domínio de comportamentos humanos importantes.Palavras-chave: aplicação, disseminação, tecnologia, terminologia, história. Nota: referência do texto original, cuja permissão de tradução foi garantida pela editora Wiley: Baer, D. M., Wolf, M. M. & Risley, T. R. (1987). Some still-current dimensions of applied behavior analysis. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 20(4), 313-327. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1987.20-313. TradutoresJoão Eduardo Cattani Vilares eMarcos Spector Azoubel.

A análise do comportamento individual tem sido sistematicamente estudada e praticada em vários contextos, ao longo de muitos anos. Essa análise resultou em descrições de princípios comportamentais que têm sido aplicados a problemas de comportamento socialmente relevantes nos últimos anos. As pesquisas de análise do comportamento aplicada – direcionadas a investigar as variáveis que podem ser efetivas para melhorar o comportamento sob estudo – possuem características que as distinguem das tradicionais pesquisas da análise do comportamento não aplicadas, conduzidas em laboratório. O estudo precisa ser aplicado, evidenciando a importância do comportamento alterado, comportamental, apresentando medidas diretas e quantitativas do comportamento alterado, e analítico, identificando com clareza o que foi responsável pela mudança. Além disso, o estudo deveria ser tecnológico, descrevendo precisamente todos os procedimentos que contribuíram para a mudança, conceitualmente sistemático, relacionando os procedimentos empregados e os resultados identificados com os processos comportamentais básicos, e efetivo, produzindo mudanças suficientemente relevantes, e deveria demonstrar alguma generalidade, planejando e avaliando a extensão dos efeitos da aplicação ao longo do tempo, para outras situações e para outros comportamentos.Palavras-chave: análise do comportamento aplicada, delineamentos experimentais, metodologia, pesquisa aplicada, tecnologia comportamental. Nota: Referência do texto original, cuja permissão de tradução foi garantida pela editora Wiley: Baer, D. M., Wolf, M. M. & Risley, T. R. (1968). Some current dimensions of applied behavior analysis. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1(1), 91-97. Resumo e abstract foram elaborados a partir dos principais aspectos do texto; a publicação original não incluía resumo. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1968.1-91.TradutoresJoão Eduardo Cattani Vilares eMarcos Spector Azoubel.

Evaluations of community-based programs for delinquents have usually addressed differential outcomes or cost-efficiency, but generally ignored the treatment environments themselves. Yet milieu characteristics are important in assessing treatment quality. The present research examined several environmental dimensions in 11 group home programs. Teaching-Family programs scored significantly higher on observational and self-report measures of staff-youth relationships and interactions, staff teaching activities and disapproval of deviance, the family-likeness and pleasantness of the program atmosphere, and the extent of prosocial behavior displayed by the participants. Several of the measures were significantly negatively correlated with self-reported delinquency. The results suggest that, contrary to some stereotypes, behavioral programs can be pleasant, positive, and familylike while offering structured treatment.

Twenty years ago, an anthropological note described the current dimensions of applied behavior analysis as it was prescribed and practiced in 1968: It was, or ought to become, applied, behavioral, analytic, technological, conceptual, effective, and capable of appropriately generalized outcomes. A similar anthropological note today finds the same dimensions still prescriptive, and to an increasing extent, descriptive. Several new tactics have become evident, however, some in the realm of conceptual analysis, some in the sociological status of the discipline, and some in its understanding of the necessary systemic nature of any applied discipline that is to operate in the domain of important human behaviors.

The past 20 years have been productive ones for the field of applied behavior analysis. A brief review of our own efforts during this period reveals that we have accomplished several but not all of our goals for the Teaching‐Family approach. In this context, we note that the setting of realistic and appropriate goals is important for the field and for society. Moreover, we suggest that the realistic goal for some persons with serious delinquent behavior may be extended supportive and socializing treatment rather than permanent cure from conventional short‐term treatment programs. We base this suggestion on the accumulating evidence that serious delinquent behavior may often be part of a significantly disabling and durable condition that consists of multiple antisocial and dysfunctional behaviors, often runs in families, and robustly eludes effective short‐term treatment. Like other significant disabilities such as retardation, autism, and blindness, the effects of this condition may be a function of an interaction of environmental and constitutional variables. We argue that our field has the wherewithal to construct effective and humane long‐term supportive environments for seriously delinquent youths. In this regard, we explore the dimensions, rationales, logistics, and beginnings of a new treatment direction that involves long‐term supportive family treatment. We contend that such supportive families may be able to provide long, perhaps even lifetime, socializing influences through models, values, and contingencies that seem essential for developing and maintaining prosocial behavior in these high‐risk youths.

Perhaps the most systematic, and certainly the most long-lived and widely disseminated, application of the behavioral approach with juvenile offenders has been in the context of group homes. Research and development based on behavioral principles and procedures began at the University of Kansas in the late 1960s and continues to the present to establish and refine an effective, consumer-preferred, and replicable group home treatment model. Because that model—the Achievement Place or Teaching-Family model (Wolf, Phillips, & Fixsen, 1972)—has been the focal point of almost all of the behavioral research and development concerning group homes, this chapter will concentrate on that model. Following a summary of the results of evaluation research on the Teaching-Family approach, the chapter concludes with a discussion of how evaluation results have prompted major reconsideration of the original assumptions of the approach.

This experiment evaluated parent and teacher use of reinforcement-based, reductive procedures to treat aggressive pinching in a severely retarded child. A withdrawal and a multiple baseline design were used for the analysis. Substantial and lasting treatment effects were obtained at home and school. The benefits and problems associated with parent use of reinforcement-based, behavioral procedures with severely handicapped children, as well as the comparative effects of DRO and DRI are discussed.

Cummings's 1985 response to our prior article suggests that the American Psychological Association was justified in not adequately describing or qualifying medical-cost-offset research findings, because the “preponderance of evidence” in the over-all literature is “quite persuasive.” We argue in return that one's willingness to accept a body of evidence as persuasive does not excuse one from providing important qualifications for findings, especially when significant threats to validity exist. We question whether the evidence is indeed persuasive. A review of the evidence suggests that the potential for serious regression and selection biases is not limited to the studies described in the APA document. Cummings acknowledges that studies of offset have weaknesses but argues that collectively they provide evidence analogous to that establishing a causal link between smoking and disease. On the contrary, as we describe, the evidence linking smoking and disease is vastly stronger. We do not find compelling the analogy pairing the Surgeon General's conclusion about smoking with a government agency's report concluding that psychological care reduces medical costs. We appreciate that one would not want to use a no-treatment control group in the kind of research Cummings is currently conducting, but there may be alternative, quasi-experimental designs which allow testing for absolute effects while controlling for possible regression.

The American Psychological Association's “Psychology as a Health Care Profession” (1979) contains a review of several studies on the cost-effectiveness of psychotherapy. As we document, that review does not consider viable alternative interpretations or qualify findings in line with the studies' substantial limitations, e.g., their lack of controls for regression or selection biases. Following our critique, we suggest that in light of the financial contingencies surrounding conclusions about the effectiveness of psychotherapy, special care must be taken to ensure that psychology's public stance on the value of psychotherapy contains the qualifications suggested by the scientific evidence. Public statements by the American Psychological Association on the issue of the effectiveness of psychotherapy might be based on a review of the scientific merits of pertinent studies by an independent body of research methodologists.