Abstract
Professional organizations that oversee the accreditation of graduate training programs in behavior analysis have increased didactic training requirements for programs in various domains across the years. One of the areas in which this has occurred concerns training in philosophy within behavior science. Although content-hour requirements for didactic philosophical training have increased, the contents of this training are not prescribed and are left to the discretion of individual programs. We conducted a survey of verified course sequence programs to assess the current state of training in philosophy in behavior analysis graduate training programs. The results provided a list of common topics and readings in philosophy courses, and indicated an emphasis on radical behaviorism and the works of B. F. Skinner. The list of topics and readings obtained provides a resource for course design, and we suggest that exposing students to a broader range of behavioristic and nonbehavioristic topics and readings may enhance students’ orientation to philosophical issues in behavior analysis.
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All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in the supplementary information files for this article (SI 4).
Notes
As an example, Rey et al. (2019) found that behavior analysts held more negative views of individuals with substance use disorders (SUDs) than those with other mental disorders. As only 68% of behavior analysts surveyed reported adhering to a behavioristic philosophy, the authors attributed the results to pervasive cultural views of SUDs as being due to personal weakness, moral shortcomings, etc. instead of adherence to a thoroughgoing behavioristic view that SUDs develop as a result of certain learning histories (e.g., Skinner, 1974).
Although the wording of the recruitment email suggested only one response per VCS at a given university should be made, it is possible that multiple instructors within one VCS program responded to this survey. We did not collect data on the university affiliation or VCS number for the VCS coordinators/instructors; thus, it is possible that there is some redundancy in our data resulting from multiple survey responses relative to the same VCS program. Of the 41 respondents whose data were included for data analysis, 34 were VCS coordinators and 7 were instructors but not coordinators. It is therefore possible that these seven responses were redundant, which would reduce the representation of our sample size to 12% of the target population (34/284).
There are additional critical components to concept formation that are not noted here. We refer readers to Layng (2019) for a tutorial and overview of concept formation.
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The authors have no known financial conflicts of interest to declare. The first two authors are faculty members in a behavior analysis training program that is both ABAI accredited and contains a VCS. At the time of writing this article, Dr. Bethany P. Contreras serves as a VCS coordinator, and Dr. Matthew Lewon teaches course content related to philosophy of behavior analysis. We did not respond to the survey, nor did we include any information about our own behavior analysis training program in the current study or article.
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Contreras, B.P., Lewon, M., Peal, C. et al. The State of Teaching Philosophy in Behavior Analysis Training Programs. Behav Analysis Practice 17, 615–625 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-023-00889-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-023-00889-8