BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS AND ECOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. A REVIEW OF HARRY HEFT'SECOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY IN CONTEXT

Abstract

Relations between behavior analysis and ecological psychology have been strained for years, notwithstanding the occasional comment on their affinities. Harry Heft's (2001)Ecological Psychology in Context provides an occasion for reviewing anew those relations and affinities. It describes the genesis of ecological psychology in James's radical empiricism; addresses Holt's neorealism and Gestalt psychology; and synthesizes Gibson's ecological psychology and Barker's ecobehavioral science as a means for understanding everyday human behavior. Although behavior analysis is excluded from this account, Heft's book warrants a review nonetheless: It describes ecological psychology in ways that are congruent and complementary with behavior analysis (e.g., nonmediational theorizing; the provinces of natural history and natural science). After introducing modern ecological psychology, I comment on (a) Heft's admirable, albeit selective, historiography; (b) his ecological psychology-past and present-as it relates to Skinner's science and system (e.g., affordances, molar behavior); (c) his misunderstandings of Skinner's behaviorism (e.g., reductionistic, mechanistic, molecular); and (d) the theoretical status of Heft's cognitive terms and talk (i.e., in ontology, epistemology, syntax). I conclude by considering the alliance and integration of ecological psychology and behavior analysis, and their implications for unifying and transforming psychology as a life science, albeit more for the future than at present.

Holt’s Realism: New Reasons for Behavior Analysis

“…At best, the study of memory from a direct realist standpoint could merge into a comprehensive research program on veridical as well as nonveridical perceptual content and consciousness (Katz & Frost, 1979). Behavior analysts and ecological psychologists may be more aware than before of the commonalities between their respective approaches (Costall, 1984;Morris, 2009). It is time for behavior analysis to come back to its realist roots (O'Neil, 1968) and face the hard issue of perception.…”

A Better Kind of Continuity

“…When considering 4E cognition, however, particularly in comparative perspective, radical behaviourism has a lot of merit because, as argued in detail elsewhere, this represents is an interesting pragmatist deviation from the cognitivist Platonic‐Cartesian view that has dominated comparative cognition both before and since (Malone ; Barrett ) (although I do not disagree that some of the empirical work in behaviour analysis involved a lot of atheoretical rat‐running that perhaps didn't go anywhere much). Morris () also emphasizes the pragmatist viewpoint and the clear links between Gibson's ecological psychology and radical behaviourism/behaviour analysis, suggesting that the former can be considered as a 'natural history’ of psychology that complements the ‘natural science’ of behaviour analysis. Most obviously, Skinner's philosophy of radical behaviourism was an effort to eradicate a dualist view of mental life, and to treat internal and external processes not as different kinds of things but as one and the same kind of process: as behaviour.…”

Stop Preaching to the Choir, Publish Outside the Box: A Discussion

“…Some advice follows. First, enrich your knowledge of research outside the box by reading it (e.g., Heft 2001;Mills 1998;Oyama 1985); communicate that knowledge inside the box (e.g., at conferences; see, e.g., Morris 1995b); and establish your expertise in it by publishing substantive reviews of its books in behavior analytic venues (e.g., Midgley and Morris 1992;Morris 2002Morris , 2009.…”