Behavior analysis and neuroscience: Complementary disciplines

作者：Donahoe John W^*

来源：Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2017, 107(3): 301-320.

DOI：10.1002/jeab.251

• reinforcement
• selectionism
• neuroscience
• conditioned reinforcement
• stimulus control
• equivalence classes
• memory

Behavior analysis and neuroscience are disciplines in their own right but are united in that both are subfields of a common overarching fieldbiology. What most fundamentally unites these disciplines is a shared commitment to selectionism, the Darwinian mode of explanation. In selectionism, the order and complexity observed in nature are seen as the cumulative products of selection processes acting over time on a population of variantsfavoring some and disfavoring otherswith the affected variants contributing to the population on which future selections operate. In the case of behavior analysis, the central selection process is selection by reinforcement; in neuroscience it is natural selection. The two selection processes are inter-related in that selection by reinforcement is itself the product of natural selection. The present paper illustrates the complementary nature of behavior analysis and neuroscience through considering their joint contributions to three central problem areas: reinforcementincluding conditioned reinforcement, stimulus controlincluding equivalence classes, and memoryincluding reminding and remembering.

• 出版日期2017-5