Behavior analysis is not one activity. It is a family of related efforts: a philosophy, a basic science, an applied science, and a profession that delivers services. Knowing which is which helps you read the literature, talk about your work accurately, and sort the work you read about by its purpose.
Why it matters
When a caregiver asks, "Is ABA just a therapy?", the honest answer is that the services they see sit on top of a larger structure. The philosophy shapes which explanations you accept. Basic research discovers the principles. Applied research turns those principles into tested procedures. Practice uses those procedures, plus ongoing data, to help particular clients and organizations.
Mixing these up causes real problems. A practitioner who treats a single client's AB graph as proof that a procedure "works for everyone" is confusing practice with research. A student who thinks basic research is irrelevant because it uses pigeons misses where schedules of reinforcement, the matching law, and stimulus control came from.
Key ideas
- Three branches plus practice. Cooper, Heron, and Heward describe three branches of the science (behaviorism, the experimental analysis of behavior, and applied behavior analysis) and a fourth, closely linked domain: professional practice guided by the science of behavior analysis.
- Behaviorism is the philosophy. It is the conceptual framework for a science of behavior. John B. Watson launched behaviorism in 1913, but the philosophy behind modern behavior analysis is B. F. Skinner's radical behaviorism, which also treats private events such as thinking as behavior. Work in this domain is mostly conceptual and theoretical rather than experimental.
- EAB is basic research. The experimental analysis of behavior looks for fundamental principles and processes, such as how different schedules of reinforcement shape patterns of responding. Skinner's The Behavior of Organisms (1938) launched it, and the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (founded 1958) is its main outlet.
- ABA is applied research. Applied behavior analysis applies those principles to improve socially significant behavior and uses experimentation to show which variables produced the change. Baer, Wolf, and Risley described its defining dimensions in the first volume of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (1968).
- Practice delivers services. Professional practice guided by the science of behavior analysis is what BCBAs do with clients and organizations: assessment, intervention, caregiver and staff training, and data-based decisions about one client's program.
- Purpose defines the domain. Species, setting, and design do not decide the branch. Ask: is this work trying to clarify concepts, discover basic principles, test solutions to socially significant problems, or help a particular client?
Tip
The domains feed each other. Basic findings inform applied research, applied research supplies the evidence base for practice, and puzzles from practice send researchers back to the lab. Studies that deliberately bridge basic and applied work are often called translational research.
Definitions
- Behaviorism: the philosophy of the science of behavior, which addresses questions such as what counts as behavior and what counts as an explanation.
- Experimental analysis of behavior (EAB): the basic research branch, which seeks the fundamental principles and processes that govern behavior.
- Applied behavior analysis (ABA): the applied science that uses procedures based on behavioral principles to improve behavior that matters in people's lives, and that runs experiments to show which variables actually produced the improvement.
- Professional practice guided by the science of behavior analysis: delivering behavior-analytic services to clients and consumers, with decisions grounded in the research and in ongoing data.
Examples from a session
One question, four domains
- Behaviorism: A professor writes an article explaining why "she hit because she was frustrated" is not a complete explanation, and how feelings can be analyzed as private events shaped by the same variables as public behavior. No new data are collected.
- EAB: A lab team measures how rats distribute lever presses between two concurrent variable-interval schedules to test a quantitative account of choice. Nobody's quality of life is the target.
- ABA: Researchers use a multiple-baseline design across three classrooms to show that a peer-mediated program increases social initiations by autistic first graders, then publish the results.
- Practice: Andre, a BCBA, trains a grandmother to use functional communication training at home with her 6-year-old grandson, graphs the data weekly, and adjusts the plan when progress stalls.
Notice that the ABA study and Andre's work could involve the same procedure. The difference is the goal: the researchers want generalizable knowledge, while Andre wants this child to communicate better. He relies on data but does not need a reversal before he helps the family.
Common mistakes / exam traps
- "EAB means animals, ABA means people." Plenty of basic research uses human participants, and the species studied tells you nothing about the question being asked. Decide by purpose, not species.
- "EAB happens in labs, ABA happens in the real world." Setting is a clue, not the rule. Applied research can run in a clinic room. Ask whether the target behavior is socially significant to the participant.
- Thinking practice is not scientific. Practice is guided by the science. It uses evidence-based procedures and ongoing measurement, even when it does not show experimental control.
- Confusing radical behaviorism with EAB. Radical behaviorism is a philosophy. EAB is an experimental research program that rests on it.
Exam trap
When a stem describes someone's work and asks for the branch, ignore the setting and species. Find the purpose: clarify concepts (behaviorism), discover basic principles (EAB), test interventions for socially significant behavior (ABA), or serve a specific client (practice).
Exam trap
ABA research vs. professional practice: in everyday speech "ABA" means services, but as a branch name it means the applied science. The discriminating feature is the aim. Research seeks generalizable knowledge and must show experimental control; practice serves one client and uses ongoing data, so an AB graph from a client's program is not a demonstrated functional relation.
Quick check
Keiko, a BCBA, writes a journal commentary arguing that behavior analysts should treat thinking as behavior to be explained rather than as the cause of overt actions. She collects no data. Which domain does her article belong to?
Related topics
- The scientific goals of behavior analysis: description, prediction, and control (A.1)
- Explaining behavior through radical behaviorism (A.3)
- The dimensions of applied behavior analysis (A.5)
- What makes a design single-case: repeated measures, prediction, verification, replication (D.4)
- Recommending interventions: assessment results, evidence, preference, and contextual fit (H.2)