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Behavior science doesn’t apply to the real world Many people think that behavior science is solely a laboratory science, or that the principles of behavior first discovered in laboratories only apply to rats and pigeons.   On the contrary, Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is the real world branch of experimental behavior analysis, and over the last 60 years it has achieved a wide sphere of influence where all sorts of behavior solutions are needed.  Below is a partial list of fields in which ABA has been highly effective. education clinical psychology autism self-injurious behavior developmental disabilities infant assessment gerontology organizational performance management training and instructional design behavioral safety the experimental analysis of behavior (basic research) brain injuries human operant research animal and pet training verbal behavior behavior pharmacology, drug self-administration and drug discrimination behavior toxicology behavioral medicine computer modeling of behavior and artificially intelligent agents decision support systems human factors and user interface design

The relevance of behavior science to improving the lives of humans and other animals is no longer reasonably questioned.  To learn more about it, see www.behavior.org.  At this site there is a comprehensive tutorial, an excellent glossary, and a treasure trove of interesting articles.

You can’t modify hardwired behaviors

The old model that pits nature against nurture is now being replaced with a new understanding best characterized as nature via nurture. In other words, nature and nurture are inextricably entwined.  This new view is largely the result of recent findings that learning, defined as behavior change due to experience, involves gene activation.

In reciprocal fashion, experience activates genes, which produces proteins that change the neural circuits in the brain and alter the way in which an individual behaves.  At every step of the way, the environment is involved.

Innate behavior is automatic, it is behavior performed without prior experience. Innate behaviors include simple reflexes (eg eye blink) and flexible action patterns (eg courting) common to all members of a species. There are also genetic lines within each species that increase the occurrence of very general behavioral tendencies (eg shyness).

Still, none of these forms of innate behavior are unaffected by experience.  For example, the first time someone unexpectedly drops a heavy book most of us automatically startle, but by the fourth or fifth time the book is dropped, neither we, nor our parrots, bat an eye. This process is known as habituation.

Too often, people evoke the hardwired explanation as an excuse for their own lack of knowledge about behavior and lack of teaching skills. They draw sweeping conclusions about all parrots, based solely on personal experience with a very limited number of birds – for example, amazons are innately afraid of the color red; cockatoos innately scream at dawn and dusk; and severe macaws are innately aggressive.

Of course the implication of the supposed innateness of these behaviors is that there is something inside the bird’s brain that can’t be changed. The critical thinker asks, “If these behaviors are hardwired, why is it that all companion amazons, cockatoos and severe macaws do not behave this way?” and, “In what way does the environment account for these observations and maintain these behaviors?”