Abstract
Conventional behavior, of which linguistic behavior is the principal variety, is identified as responses having formal properties that are not determined by the natural properties of stimulus objects, but instead by properties attributed to those objects under the auspices of particular groups. Given the ubiquity of this type of behavior in the repertoires of human beings and its complete absence in those of non-humans, the argument is made that animal models of human disorders, in which disturbances of conventional behaviors constitute defining features, are not sufficiently analogous to these conditions in humans to be pursued with good result. Because conventional behavior of the linguistic type is ubiquitous in the repertoires of normally developed human adults, it is suggested that the behavior of pre-verbal infants and/or non-verbal persons is preferable to that of adults as the phenomenal source for the construction of animal models of human psychological events. The observation and measurement of psychological events is held to be complicated by a number of their characteristics, including their complexity by virtue of whole organism participation, their essential complementarily with stimulus events, and the corrigibility of both form and function over their repeated occurrences, among others. The implications of these features for modeling enterprises are discussed.
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Notes
As exemplified, linguistic behavior is included in this category, and further constitutes the dominant variety within it. However, the category is somewhat broader than this, including responses of non-linguistic form that develop in concert with linguistic behavior. While responses of the latter sort would not arise in the absence of linguistic behavior, their forms are not linguistic per se. They are nonetheless acquired under the auspices of particular group circumstances and are conventional within them. For this reason, we prefer the term “conventional” rather than “linguistic” to nominate this category of human activity.
An individual’s repertoire may contain multiple forms of responding coordinated with the same object encountered under different contextual conditions (i.e., a multi-lingual repertoire) however.
In our view this circumstance does not imply that such actions are occurring in the absence of stimulation, as suggested by Skinner (1957), but rather that they are coordinated with currently operating substitutional functions of physically absent stimuli.
While activities of various sorts may be coordinated with stimulus functions of these sorts, including perceptual activities, it is our position that nothing of this sort would be possible in the absence of conventional action which, we believe, is also the means by which the material environment of human beings is able to be so radically altered.
While it is possible that the failure to observe derived relational responding in non-humans is due to circumstances of a non-fundamental sort (Hayes 1992), the fact that behaviors of this sort have not been observed suggests they are at least not prominent features of the behavioral repertoires of non-humans.
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Hayes, L.J., Delgado, D. Invited Commentary on Animal Models in Psychiatry: Animal Models of Non-conventional Human Behavior. Behav Genet 37, 11–17 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-006-9126-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-006-9126-z