WHAT EVERY STUDENT OF BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS OUGHT TO LEARN - A SYSTEM FORCLASSIFYING THE MULTIPLE EFFECTS OF BEHAVIORAL VARIABLES

An accurate repertoire of tacts and intraverbals about behavior is ess ential for scientific and technical communication. All behavioral effe cts of the environment can be classified in an eight-cell arrangement created by three dichotomies: respondent versus operant, evocative ver sus function altering, and unlearned versus learned. By refining some old definitions and inventing a few new terms and symbols, it becomes possible to locate any functional relation in the eight cells of this set of categories. Much instruction about behavior analysis can then f ocus on helping students master a two-part repertoire consisting of (a ) providing the term (or symbol) when given a description of a relevan t situation and (b) describing the environmental and behavioral eviden ce for the relation when given the term (or symbol). This system of an alysis is described and illustrated with sample questions and answers that teach about the system.