Behavior analysis of child development

The behavioral analysis of child development originates from John B. Watson's behaviorism. Watson studied child development, looking specifically at development through conditioning (see Little Albert experiment). He helped bring a natural science perspective to child psychology by introducing objective research methods based on observable and measurable behavior. B.F. Skinner then further extended this model to cover operant conditioning and verbal behavior. Skinner was then able to focus these research methods on feelings and how those emotions can be shaped by a subject’s interaction with the environment. Sidney Bijou (1955) was the first to use this methodological approach extensively with children.

In 1948, Sidney Bijou took a position as associate professor of psychology at the University of Washington and served as director of the university’s Institute of Child Development. Under his leadership, the Institute added a child development clinic, nursery school classrooms, and a research lab. Bijou began working with Donald Baer in the Department of Human Development and Family Life at the University of Kansas, applying behavior analytic principles to child development in an area referred to as "Behavioral Development" or "Behavior Analysis of Child Development". Skinner's behavioral approach and Kantor's interbehavioral approach were adopted in Bijou and Baer's model. They created a three-stage model of development (e.g., basic, foundational, and societal). Bijou and Baer looked at these socially determined stages, as opposed to organizing behavior into change points or cusps (behavioral cusp). In the behavioral model, development is considered a behavioral change. It is dependent on the kind of stimulus and the person’s behavioral and learning function. Behavior analysis in child development takes a mechanistic, contextual, and pragmatic approach.

From its inception, the behavioral model has focused on prediction and control of the developmental process. The model focuses on the analysis of a behavior and then synthesizes the action to support the original behavior. The model was changed after Richard J. Herrnstein studied the matching law of choice behavior developed by studying of reinforcement in the natural environment. More recently, the model has focused more on behavior over time and the way that behavioral responses become repetitive. it has become concerned with how behavior is selected over time and forms into stable patterns of responding. A detailed history of this model was written by Pelaez. In 1995, Henry D. Schlinger, Jr. provided the first behavior analytic text since Bijou and Baer comprehensively showed how behavior analysis—a natural science approach to human behavior—could be used to understand existing research in child development. In addition, the quantitative behavioral developmental model by Commons and Miller is the first behavioral theory and research to address notion similar to stage.

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