TOWARD A CONSTRUCTIONAL APPROACH TO SOCIAL PROBLEMS: ETHICAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES RAISED BY APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS

2. Entry behavior, or current relevant repertoire: - The constructional property of the outcome in p.i. dictates what the starting point should be, namely, those successful repertoires which the purchaser already brings with him. The program will be built on these. In a programed text, these are stated in an introductory comment which typically follows the title page. This informs the reader (or instructor) that the ensuing program presumes mastery of a specified prerequisite, since it will start out at that point. A set of criteria may then be provided to see if his background meets these requirements, or those of a less advanced or even more advanced text. As we apply this to personal and interpersonal problems, we attempt to ascertain the relatable skills in the client's repertoire. And this will include a past history-of successful patterns and solutions.31

3. Sequence of change steps: - This sequence, of course, is the printed text of the programed book. In a linear programed text, each successive step (frame) is a miniature program containing the elements of the larger program in which it is embedded. The attained target of the preceding step is the current repertoire. The step itself consists of a behavioral requirement which either differs somewhat from the requirement at the preceding step (shaping), or is identical to the preceding requirement but under different stimulus control (fading), or both. This linear model, conceptually elegant and useful as it is in a text, is often too simple for the requirements of a social program. Indeed, even in texts, the program may branch, recycle, may provide options, or be open to original contributions or other unexpected developments and capitalize on them. The reader is referred to the p.s.i. movement (personalized systems of instruction, Keller, 1968; Sherman, 1974), for other extensions. Differences between these extensions need not concern us here. What is of concern is that the p.i. (or p.s.i.) program tends throughout to be constructional. When deficits and patterns considered inappropriate occur, the student may be referred, depending on the type of program (linear, branching, etc.), to an earlier point in the program, to another unit, or to another source to construct the desired repertoire.

4. Progression-maintaining consequences: - The opening words of the Holland and Skinner (1961) program introduce a quotation from Thorndike and Gates, some 30 years earlier: "If, by a miracle of mechanical ingenuity, a book could be so arranged that only to him who had done what was directed on page one would page two become visible, and so on, much that now requires personal instructions could be managed by print" (p. v). The teaching machine, of course, so arranges things admirably. Where no consequences other than presentation of the next unit are provided, what maintains progression? Why bother? In a well-defined program, successive delivery of successive steps constitutes progression toward the outcome, and such delivery (viewed as a stimulus) or such progression (viewed behaviorally) may be considered as a maintaining consequence for advancement-providing the program outcome itself serves this reinforcing function.32 Progressive mastery of a course or of the psychotherapeutic outcomes itself becomes reinforcing, and no tokens, points, M&M's, or other extrinsic reinforcers are then needed. Need I point out that behavior analysis does indeed utilize intrinsic reinforcement?